Breakfast At The End of the World
by Runi-chan
Summary: Viral should have figured this would be a long, stranger trip when his new companion showed up piloting a big blue telephone box that was bigger inside than out. Dr.WhoxTTGLxetc crossover. Oneshots, w/spoilers for both series throughout.
1. Arrival: Part I

...I should never, **ever** think about mixing my fandoms. Things like this result. Enjoy, and as always-nothing belongs to me. I'm just a fan who can't sleep.

Takes place post series, and is mostly an excuse for silliness and to lighten the mood for both characters. The biggest chunk of angst is in this first chapter, I swear.

* * *

One time, the prospect of a long, eternal life was appealing to Viral. This was back when beastmen burned out quicker than the sparse vegetation that clung to the rocky plains where the humans had still refused to go. But now-after losing so many against the Anti-Spirals, after watching his friends grapple and fail against age, it was just daunting. All of eternity, and...nothing to do with it. He would sit here, staring at the gleaming cities that the Dai Gurren's hardwork revived, until the world burned.

"Viral-san?"

The beastman looked up, annoyed. It was Gimmy-older now, though Viral hardly bothered to count years any more.

"What?"

"I wanted to check to see if you'd changed your mind about..."

"I have no interest in attending a planning meeting for the city, Gimmy. It's not my place," he replied, trying to keep an edge off of his voice, "Congrats to you and your wife, though"

Gimmy smiled-not the manic grin of his younger days.

"Yeah, twins! Can you believe it?"

Viral only offered a restrained smile. He knew the humans didn't mean ill by mentioning children-after all, he had told no one of the dream world his mind had crafted when the Anti-Spiral had a hold of them.

"Is that all?"

Gimmy nodded.

"Great. I'm heading into the mountains-" Viral hopped down from his perch and dusted himself off, "see you".

"Bye!"

Viral only waved.

There was something about the mountains that Viral had always particularly liked. Perhaps it was the time spent in service to General Thymilph, whose lands to canvass were by and large filled with rugged mountains. The humans had always shied away from the mountains, probably because of the difficulty of the terrain-it was nigh impossible to cultivate anything in the rocky, sandy soil. He, however, had little to worry about-though hunger still affected him, it wasn't going to kill him. For once, he simply wanted to think.

What was he supposed to do? Lord Genome had granted him forever to sing the praises of his victory over the Dai Gurren Brigade, but that had failed. Now Viral took care of those who chose to live beneath the ground again-those for whom the city life was just too different. Those who he used to exterminate. But thenewer generations were educated-there were books. There were massive amounts of information that he'd helped stockpile.

Lord Genome gone. Nia, too-he remembered her, almost; kind. She was nothing but kind to him for those few days before she had vanished. All those he had fought beside, for the future of mankind. Most were gone. Yoko too. No word on Simon, though Viral always reasoned he'd find Simon a wizened old man wandering in the desert heat. Soon, no one would really 'know' Viral. He hated the thought of just being known for being the 'survivor'.

Once-long after the victory against the anti-spirals, he'd gone back out into space. But there was nothing there for him, and so he'd returned, duty fufilled as the peace ambassor of Earth. He had traveled endlessly-only stopping back at the city to visit and to share his knowledge.

To have forever and yet have nothing to do with it. To not even have one to share it with. Viral was by no means a creature of emotions, but the years had worn him. He did not wish his aquaintences (friends long since gone) to think him rude, so he always moved on. He really did not mean to be rude; it just wore on him that they did not understand. That they often did not listen. That they wished everything to be neat and orderly and professional-despite the fact that life was rarely that way and they knew it.

A stiff breeze blew through the mountains, and Viral stretched his arms skyward, yawning. He did dream now, occasionally. Often it was nonsense, but he sometimes managed to catch glimpses of that woman, and sometimes he managed to hear the laughter of a young child. And sometimes it was enough.

Golden eyes observed the terrain-it really had a certain sort of beauty to it. Like the mountians-the steady breeze, the struggling plants, and the sounds of...

Viral's eyes narrowed-what was that sound? A strange "whooshing" noise, and...gears? He couldn't tell. Viral cursed, remembering that the Gurlparl unit he had brought out there was sitting a few miles down from him, near the base of the mountain. His eyes darted about, sharp hearing try to catch the source of the noise. Viral's head snapped upward, catching a streak of blue careen across his field of vision.

It darted through his vision again, though slower this time. Unable to call the unit upwards, he readied himself to fight. It almost felt good-having to fight again-having something unknown coming his way.

The noise continued, stronger and louder, and the blur revealed itself to be a tall blue box, with writing that Viral could barely make out. It spun and swung in the air for a few moments before settling into the dust and quieting. Viral's paw was tight on his cleaver, ready to disable whatever emerged from the box.

He stared at it a little harder-it almost looked like a..oh, what had that weird mechanic called them...telephone boxes! Viral stared at the lettering, clearer now.

"Police. Box. Pu-public call? What the hell?"

Viral tensed, hearing the door being handled. For a moment, it seemed the tennant of the blue box would simply slip out, but the door shook, as if he was stuck. Viral almost thought he heard cursing on the other side.

Finally, the wooden door swung open. To Viral's surprise, a scrawny-looking human poked his head out, looking thoroughly confused. Viral did not move, still tensed, ready to spring.

"..Yeeaahh this is definitely not Earth," the man stepped out further to scan the terrain, and he noticed Viral, "Oh, hello! Nice to meet you!"

Viral brandished the cleaver, defiance in his eyes. He was confused, yes, but too many years of experience had taught him well.

"Who the HELL are you?" Viral snapped, looking over the man. A brown suit and...well, Viral knew little of human fashion, but athletic shoes seemed to clash with a nice suit.

The man blanked for a moment, then scrambled through his pockets. He held out a slip of paper, which Viral just stared at.

"That..doesn't say anything."

The man looked surprised.

"No..no it doesn't," he mumbled, and reached into his suitjacket. Viral stepped swiftly to the side and held the meat cleaver to the man's throat. The man stood, a little shocked, holding a small pen in his hands. Viral eyed the stranger suspsiciously, and stepped away, keeping the cleaver close.

"Who the hell are you?" Viral growled once more. The man seemed to stall, but Viral did not have time for this.

Well, he did, but the stranger did not have to know.

"JUST ANSWER! Why do you humans have to THINK so goddamned much?"

The man grinned.

"I'm the Doctor"

Viral did not understand, and tipped the man's chin upwards with the blunt edge of the cleaver. Another breeze ruffled the man's mop of brown hair.

"Doctor? DOCTOR WHO?"

* * *

Yes, I know. Obvious crossover. Will not be this flowery and angsty next chapter-which should be a lot of Viral being semi-impressed with Time Lord stuff because let's face it-what's going to freak Viral out now? After all the weird crap that went down in TTGL, what's a little time travel going to do?


	2. Arrival: Part II

Second chapter! Whoo! Thanks for the positive feedback, guys. For the curious--there should be quite a few cameos/mentions of some good ol' Dr. Who characters, and who knows--maybe Viral's not the only one that the Doctor's visited/will visit. And after these first few chapters, I'll be doing a bunch of disconnected one shots, some silly, some serious.

Disclaimer: As always, I own nothing.

* * *

Viral growled low, cleaver held to the strange man's throat.

"Well? Who?"

"Just..just the Doctor"

"No one is 'just' their job title," Viral cocked his head, nonplussed.

"Well..I am," the man had a strange smile, and there was something about his eyes. And Rossiu's nagging voice; "Do not hurt the humans, Viral, or you are right back in prison." The beastman wondered absently if Rossiu had known of his immortality and signed it into law, to torment Viral from beyond Rossiu's reach in life.

"Yeah, sure. What are you doing here?"

"Me? Well, I go here and there...now and then...I'm a traveler."

Reason stood that there were very few reasons to travel--and by oneself, no less. Still, Viral didn't believe him.

"Sorry--there's just something about you I don't trust, ape"

Viral made to flip his cleaver over, but the shrill buzzing that pierced his ears prevented him. The pain blindsided him for a moment, and when he could finally open his eyes, the cleaver was embedded deep into the mountainface. The beastman grimaced, turning to the man in anger.

"WHAT IN THE HELL?"

The Doctor wiggled the small pen.

"It's a sonic screwdriver. Traveler's best friend," the man grinned. He reminded Viral of Kamina's eternal optimism--which in turn made Viral more angry.

"A what?" Viral snarled, restraining himself from injuring the man. His mind focused--he had to get this guy far away from him, or further along on his way, he didn't care.

"You know...a screwdriver...that's..sonic"

"That's ridiculous. Wouldn't a laser work better?"

The man's face twitched slightly, and he made as if to speak, but said nothing.

"Look, I don't know what you're doing here, and I don't really care. But you are pissing me off and I have not had the pleasure of a good fight in a long while" Viral grinned, exposing the bright, sharp line of his teeth. That nagging voice in his head, "You really shouldn't hurt a human, Viral. What has this man done to you but shown up and spoken?"

The beastman made to charge, but was once again stopped by the shrill buzzing. He looked up, and the man was at the door of the box, the 'screwdriver' was pointed at him.

"Why did you...," he growled, stopping to consider logic. Oh yes. He'd tried to attack him. Viral made to get to his feet, but was driven to the ground once more by the horrible buzzing. His head snapped upward.

"I WASN'T COMING AFTER YOU THAT TIME, DAMN IT!"

He brushed the dirt from his clothing and yanked his cleaver from the mountain face, holstering it. The beastman half-fell into his blatantly unsumbmissive tone; the one he'd crafted especially for Rossiu.

"Look, I was just out here to think. You surprised me."

"Yeah, I do that."

"Should you really be proud of that?"

"Probably not."

Viral rolled his eyes and looked at the man--there was something odd about him. Not suspcious, just...different. Familiar.

"I'm Viral"

"I'm The Doctor," the man extended his hand to Viral, who only stared. The man's eyes rested on Viral's oversized paws for a brief moment, and he retracted his hand.

"Right, sorry."

"Whatever," Viral yawned, "the major city's a few hundred miles southwest of here, if you need supplies or something."

The beastman began his descent towards the gulaparl unit, when the Doctor poked his head over the ledge.

"Can I ask you something?"

Viral grit his teeth.

"Why not?"

"Have you been to the city?"

"They try to get me to stay every time I stop back. I know the humans running it"

"PERFECT. I'm looking for a part--it's a stabilizer, really, but it's a very specific one. A spiral...spiral...," the man began muttering. Viral sighed and shook his head.

"You need it for space travel, I'm guessing?"

The Doctor looked at Viral, eyes wide.

"This planet has been..."

Viral's eyes narrowed.

"Yeah, I get it. The damn beastman must have no knowledge of how to get to space."

"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean.."

"Whatever

Viral continued down the rock face, uninterrupted for a few more minutes, before the man peeked his head over the ledge again.

"Excuse me, Viral?"

"WHAT?"

"Could you give me a lift to the city, perhaps?"

--  
The cockpit of the ganmen-styled mechas was woefully inadequate for two people to fit in. It was certainly not as bad as the Gurren (that was unbelievably cramped and Viral never understood how Kamina had fit comfortably inside), but two beings were definitely a squeeze. But the Doctor had insisted on sitting inside, muttering something about riding in his small ship being too 'jolting'.

Perhaps it would not have been so taxing to Viral if the man had not insisted on talking a great deal the entire trip back--he talked about the terrain. Every.time. it changed. He talked about the Gulaparl unit, marveling at its design and function. He continually barraged Viral with questions about the city--how many people? When had it been established? How knowlegable were the mechanics?

He also asked Viral a great deal about Beastmen, as if he'd never known of them before. Viral answered in clipped words and short tones, making a mental note to introduce the Doctor to Leeron when they arrived. The flamboyant mechanic was still around, though quieter than he had been. Viral sometimes wondered whether Leeron was not some unearthly being who forever would wander the earth, freaking the hell out of everyone.

"So, what creatures are you?"

Viral turned to the man and glared.

"Right, cat and shark," the man muttered, and was silent for about two minutes.

Viral did not speak about the weakness in the beastmen. That they had burned up and burned out quickly, and that worst of all (at least in his mind), they were born sterile. Viral also did not speak of fallen comrades. He mentioned the Dai Gurren Brigade's fights and victories. He mentioned nothing about his role in them. After all, what purpose would explaining his immortality to this strange man have?

The guy would probably stare at him like he had two heads.

--

"Viral? Are you back alre..."

Gimmy stared at the Gulaparl unit, with the strange box in its hand and Viral leaping from the cockpit to get away from a man who seemed to be talking to him. A hand reached habitually for his weapon, but relaxed. If Viral was alright around him, the man was probably not a threat. The beastman greeted Gimmy briskly.

"I'm setting that blue box down near Leeron's. Send that guy down there too--Leeron'll help him."

"Send him...alone?"

Viral's smile sometimes scared Gimmy.

--

Viral cursed under his breath as the Doctor escorted his ship--he called it a Tar-diss--down to the bay near Leeron's shop. He'd stopped muttering now, focusing more on the strange blue box. Occasionally he'd say something about it being sturdier than it seemed, but he didn't want to try to fly it.

"Ah, here were are. The mechanic the universe depended on."

Leeron sneaked up behind Viral, starling the beastman so thoroughly it was amazing that he maneuvered out of the way of the claws that tore through the air out of habit.

"My my, hello again handsome," Leeron cooed, "who's the new friend?"

The beastman shook his head and pushed the man away.

"This is the..the Doctor. I ran into him out in the desert."

"Really? Doesn't look like a desert dweller to me"

The Doctor flashed a tensed, weak smile. He leaned towards Viral.

"Yeah," Viral's tone was hushed, yet his inherent amusement shone through, "he does that."

The Doctor laughed nervously and launched into something so full of technobabble that Viral was unable to comprehend it (Leeron, of course, understood every word). He dismissed himself, and was about to head to the mess hall when he heard something inside of the blue box, the...TARDIS...coo. Like a small child. The beastman raised an eyebrow in question, and dismissed it as the odd sound a base was expected to make.

He heard it again, and this time could not help himself. He walked about the bay, around the box...there it was again!

"Doctor!"

The man looked back, head cocked.

"What?"

"Open the door, I hear something inside of there!"

"What? That's im...," and he stopped, eyes widening. He scrambled through pockets and finally produced a key (Viral thought it strange that a ship meant for traversing the stars locked with a house key). He unlocked the door and scrambled inside, followed (reluctantly) by Leeron, and last of all, Viral. The beastman pushed past both of them, determined to find the source of the noise--he was sure now a child of some sort was stuck inside. He braced for tight quarters, but found none.

In fact, shining above and around him were soft white lights--an arch of honeycomb shaped fixtures. And a tall, central glass pillar, glowing a cool blue-green and emitting a soft whir.

"Holy. Shit"

* * *

HAHA The plot thickens. Rest assured, most questions will be answered. Chapter three is the final part of the intro story--then we'll be getting into the one-shots.


	3. Arrival: Part III

CHAPTER THREE! The conclusion of the 'big intro story', then lots of one/two/threeshots. And don't worry, fellow Dr.Who fans! We'll start seeing some former companions--I have a particular soft spot for Donna, especially since the end of series 4, but that doesn't mean she's first up. In fact, we get some allusions to Martha, who I loved. She was awesome.

This also may crossover with a ton of other stuff, but it's more about Viral most of the time than the Doctor. Also--using fannames for characters who really don't have a name. And a note: I slightly abuse Viral in this chapter. I'm so sorry! Please don't hate me!

As always, I own nothing. Especially not Omicron Ceti III. That's Gene Roddenberry's, and a big part of why I like the original Star Trek series. (Seen it in syndication--i'm not even twenty yet, XD). Comes from one of my favorite episodes, though I'm slightly tweaking it so that it displays your greatest desire. Go wiki it.

* * *

Viral was in total disbelief. He was half-sure that curses both human and beast were slipping past his lips, but he didn't care.

"It's..."

"Bigger on the inside, yeah," the Doctor's mouth was twisted into a childish grin--as if this was something he'd done many times.

"HOW?" Viral sputtered. Leeron tapped a pen on the blue-green cylinder, and turned to the Doctor.

"I think I know...spatial distortion, right? And," the mechanic craned his head, "some sort of...circuit to disguise the outside. Am I correct?"

The Doctor was agape for a moment, then he scratched his head.

"Damn, no one's been that close," he breathed, and then looked up at Leeron, half-smiling. "Yeah. Big ol'...wibbley--wobbly stuff"

"But...that box. Is the circuit broken or something?"

"I'll fix it...eventually," he muttered sheepishly. Viral snapped out of his stunned silence and tore around the main deck.

"God damn it, there it is again! There's a child--you have a kid in here! I know it!" the beastman growled, and saw a pathway further along. He ran down it, unable to shake the feeling that he'd hit a wall. Still, the cooing got louder--then stopped. Viral halted, panicked for a moment. Then the cries began--high and clear, and he ran again, towards the sound. He ran, making turns and looping back until the sound dictated another change in direction.

--

"Should we go find him?" Leeron tossed over his shoulder, taking note of what he saw around him. This was beyond even them--this could advance their technology lightyears beyond its current state. He turned to get an answer to his question and noticed the Doctor's disapproving eyes. Nothing overt...just a sharp hint in his direction that he should not take any of what he saw and apply it.

Leeron placed his clipboard on the console and the Doctor shrugged. "Give him a moment. It's a pretty big place, but he's not going to get lost. Besides," the man shifted, "he's on a mission. Hate to interupt him."

Leeron smiled.

"He'd probably rip you to shreds if you tried to stop him, handsome"

The Doctor laughed nervously.

"Where did you come from, again, Doctor ?"

--

Viral was running out of patience, but he knew he was close. He tore open doors, not caring if they came off the hinges. Each door eliminated another place he'd have to look.

And then suddenly, she was in front of him. He struggled to breathe.

It was her. That dream child from so many years ago, the daughter he'd never have. The girl who skipped across his subconscious mind with a beautiful woman who didn't exist. Her cheeks were slick with tears, her breath ragged from crying so hard. She hiccuped, trying to speak. Her wide eyes brightened as she looked up at him.

"Daddy?"

"You...it's you. Memusu," he whispered. No. He was asleep, unconscious. Something was wrong. But this child jumped and clung to his leg, crying "daddy" happily. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her, but he knew she wasn't really.

"Viral!"

Leeron's high and strange voice cut through, but the small child was still there, clinging to his leg.

"Viral!"

The Doctor, this time. He came around to face Viral, and examined his face, a look of concentration plastered on his own.

"Come on, what's going on? Tell me, Viral..come on.."

"It's...her," he continued to stare at the child smiling up at him. The Doctor looked back at Leeron, who only shrugged.

"Something here is causing this...ooh, come on, what could it be? Think, think, think...," The Doctor's eyes darted around the room, trying to find something, some sort of object to explain this effect on the beastman. He saw nothing, and he returned to trying to jolt the beastman from his reviere.

"I don't know what this is doing to you, but it is obviously not good. Tell me Viral, who is she? Can you hear me?"

"Her...my..my daughter."

"Where is she? What happened to her?"

Viral only stood silent, staring.

"Tell me what..."

"Viral doesn't have a daughter," Leeron said softly, "his kind can't reproduce that way. His...well, he's the last of them. Rest burned out years ago."

"Burned..."

"Beastmen were made as quick soldiers a long time ago, back when we were all underground. Didn't need sleep, could cover wide areas, and easy to replace. Basic rules of war."

"Why is he..."

"As far as I've been told, he's a messenger. Made immortal to carry on a tale of victory, though...," Leeron held back a chuckle, "quite different than what his maker thought."

The Doctor looked back at Viral, and focused on his eyes. Old eyes in a young body, he thought. And his heart softened.

"Really?"

"He and I...and a few others...are the only ones left out of a...team, you'd say. Believe it or not, we've saved our fair share of world. Universe once, too," Leeron's voice was quiet. "I don't think I'll last much longer, though."

The Doctor drew out his 'pen', and shone the light in Viral's eyes. The beastman winced, and struck the doctor in the chest. The man only winced, and continued to scan down Viral's body, head cocking when something seemed to twitch along the floor. He followed it to the wall.

"Ah, there it is!" he pulled a plant that had fallen out of its case and placed it back. Immediately, two long vines became visible, wrapped around Viral's leg. They withered and disappeared, and the beastman snapped back into reality.

"Ah, a plant from Omicron Ceti III...aggressive little bugger. Makes you see what you desire most. The first time I found it, I saw...well, it doesn't matter," the Doctor shook his head and helped Viral sit on the floor.

"You okay?"

"I...," Viral shook his head, and rested it in his paws, "yeah, I'm fine. I just thought I saw..."

"What?"

"...nothing. Why would you have something that dangerous in a contained space?"

" I_ was_ going to take it back," he intoned, a grunt escaping his lips. Viral leapt to his feet, catching the Doctor as he fell.

"Are you alright? HEY, DOCTOR MAN. STAY AWAKE."

"I'm...still..I'm okay.." he breathed, obviously in pain. Viral hefted him onto his back and with Leeron, ran to the sick bay.

--  
"I didn't mean to"

"I know. It's okay, really--not even that bad. Look, stopped bleeding already."

"But, I really didn't mean to."

"I know."

"But I..."

"JUST STOP. I get it. You're sorry," the Doctor snapped. A sharp sigh.

"I don't mean to be short, really. Just..don't talk."

Viral rarely felt bad about what he did...and he almost never apologized. The man should be grateful! But right now, he was too worn to care. Sitting in the sickbay, taking in a bit of oxygen (at Leeron's insistence--to "rid him" of the plant's pollen), he stared at the Doctor,who was holding a gauze pad to the scratch marks across his chest. He noticed Viral staring.

"It's not the first time someone's attacked me. Lost a hand once," he quipped, wiggling the fingers of one hand and grinning like a moron. Viral rolled his eyes and looked away. A young nurse entered into the room, followed close behind by Leeron. She was chatty and bubbly--frothy, Viral thought. Like bubbles in the air. Vacant. She took one look at Viral and decided to help the Doctor first. She made airy, nonsense conversation--name, weather, and the like. She removed the gauze and sucked in a breath.

"Did you fight a mountain lion or something?"

Leeron and the Doctor suppressed a loud bit of laughter, and Viral tried his best not to rip the girl's throat out. She didn't know. She was NOT making fun of him...

"Eh, yeah, something like that," the Doctor muttered. The nurse gestured for Leeron.

"Can you check his heart?"

Leeron plucked the stethoscope from the wall and placed the end on the Doctor's chest. Said man jumped slightly.

"Bloody cold!"

Leeron listened, forehead furrowing where eyebrows would have met. Viral suddenly paid more attention, almost fearful that he'd seriously injured this strange man. The stethoscope moved again, and the same expression. Leeron sent the nurse to get more supplies for stitches.

"You have enough. Why did you send her awa--," Viral was interrupted by the slam of the door.

"You have two hearts," Leeron proclaimed, "you're not human."

"Didn't make any claims that I was. That's what I think is so interesting about humans...they say they can hate each other but then if you look like one of them, you are one of them. Makes no bloody sense and ooh, I'm rambling. Sorry."

"What are you?" Viral's voice was quiet, but filled with a sort of aggression.

"Time Lord," and his tone was disturbingly somber, "Last one."

"What do you want here?"

"I need a spiral stablizer, and was heading somewhere else. I'm not..," and here he scratched his head again, "fantastic with pinpointing where I'm going sometimes. Went to the end of the universe once, met a fellow like you, Viral. Course, that was because of...," and he was silent.

"Not everyone is trying to hurt us, Viral," Leeron spoke, trying to lift the uncomfortable silence as the nurse (effervescent and empty) returned.

Soon the Doctor's wounds were treated and they were in front of his machine. Leeron bid his goodbyes and stood by the railing, waiting.

"Well, um...thank you. And sorry about the plant...normally I'm so much better at keeping those things in check."

"Uh huh."

A short pause.

"You know, he told me."

Viral's steel facade stood firm.

"What?"

"That you travel too. I mean, not as far as I've gone, but...well, I know the feeling. Running from the past. You know..," he smiled again. It reminded Viral of Kamina and Simon and all those people who had irritated him for so long,

"Sometimes it's more fun to travel with another."

"Yeah, I'm sure. No thanks, I have no desire to ride around with you in a tiny wooden box to a bunch of nearby planets."

"Did I mention it travels through time?"

"Yeah, sure it does"

"No, really, it does!" he ran inside, and the box faded with that strange whir, then reappeared just as quickly. In his hands laid one of Adiane's eyepatches and suddenly Viral had recalled when she had beaten him because she had not been able to find the eyepatch.

"Okay, so you can travel through time..."

"I can't change pre-established events. And...before you ask...time's..not that simple."

Viral's arms remained crossed, and his eyes disbelieving.

"Do you want to come? Eternity's a lot better when you're paling around for a while, you know."

"Pft, yeah, sure," Viral snapped, "you'd know what that was like."

"My people didn't age. They regenerated. Which, you know, is all fine well and good when you're all together. But when you're alone, and you have a ton of lives ahead of you, and you decide you need companions...," he took a deep breath, "yeah. Things happen. I've watched so many of my friends...go."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah."

"But I mean, you may have some fun. Who knows--bad ol' kitty might even smile?"

He was reminding Viral of Kamina again. Viral looked back at Leeron.

"Oh, what do I care? You have eternity, and you're a grown man. What are you looking to me for?"

"If there's a monument built to Rossiu, blow it up for me," Viral replied, and stepped beyond the blue wooden doors.

And then they faded, and were gone. Leeron smiled.

"Goodbye, my friend."

Viral's paws gripped the railing so harshly he was surprised it didn't bend beneath his strength.

"CAN'T YOU DRIVE THIS DAMN THING?"

The Doctor ran circles around the core, reveling in the jolting and twisting the TARDIS was making them do.

"IT'S MADE FOR 6 FOLKS TO DRIVE, NOT ONE. BUT IT'S FUN, RIGHT?"

The ride steadied, and the Doctor was grinning like a madman. Like Kamina, in a suit.

"Now, I think...I think you need new clothes."

Viral cocked an eyebrow.

"What?"

* * *

And now the subject of our first oneshot! Semi-connected to this story, since, well, Viral can't exactly wander around in a jumpsuit and he can wear normal clothes (witness; at Simon and Nia's wedding. IN DRESS CLOTHES. Happy fan am I)


	4. New Clothing

_From here forward, I'll be accepting prompts for future one shots, but I haven't figured exactly how to do that yet without turning my review page into a forum, which I know isn't allowed, I suppose...I don't know, can we message each other yet? I'm a little behind the times with the site updates. I remember when you couldn't edit your stuff on the site! You had to do it on your own computer! Whoo, wow. I feel old, and it's not even my birthday yet (that's in...three days). Ahahaa.  
But yeah--now the theme/prompt of each one/two shot'll be not only the chapter title, but listed here within the body of the story._

_OH YES. And Martha/Jack/maybe Mickie'll be the first one to meet Viral, though I'm not telling you how soon. I'm sort of making these up as I go, and they have no backup on my actual computer. (I like this story, though, so I probably will back it up). I can just imagine Mickey meeting Viral. Don't think he'd sleep for a week. Also, more crossovers should be coming in this series. Currently in my head is a Hellsing/Dawn crossover with this._

_Disclaimer: I own nothing, though I am very happy to hear that Viral may be getting his own spinoff. Hopefully they won't abuse the big kitty. Next one shot'll be happier, I promise!  
_

Prompt: New Clothes

Summary:

* * *

Viral only glared at the Doctor.

"There is no," he repeated, "way in seven layers of hell that I will wear that".

The man only looked at him, head cocked in curiosity, as if he didn't understand what was wrong with the "very nice" set of 'casual' clothing that Jack Harkness had left behind. ("Always can find more clothing, timehopping, you know". As if Donna hadn't asked him enough why there were men's clothes in his wardrobe that clearly could not belong to him).

"Why?"

"...that offers no protection:there are no sleeves, and...I'm not quite sure...are those pants? Plus, that is a hideous color."

"What do you mean?"

"It looks like a toddler threw up on it. If you're going to insist on having me wear different clothing," and Viral winced as he said this, for he never liked feeling dependent, "you should at least allow me to look."

The man only shrugged and showed Viral to the wardrobe and its spiraling racks full of clothing from too many lifetimes.

The beastman blinked in astonishment. In his lifetime, he'd worn perhaps five different sets of clothing--his only 'dress' clothing at Simon's behest, for the happiest/saddest day he knew the civilization could see. He was not comfortable in dressclothing, or any 'normal' human clothing at all. It felt constricting to him--shifted and moved too easily. And it was impractical in battle.

But he was beyond that now, and decided that if the strange "Time Lord" could run around the universe in a suit and trainers, it was worth half a shot to wear something nice. Every time he had entered the city, stares and whispers followed from even some of the more 'civilized' citizenry, despite assurance of 'equality'. He was quite sure he would not seem half so out of place if he did not insist on wearing the jumpsuit that had served him throughout his military career.

"Big, isn't it?" the Doctor chimed, gazing around his wardrobe with a hidden half-smile. Viral pursed his lips and sighed. Surely there was something in here that he could wear. He lifted a large paw and extended a digit, making note of each item that passed by him. Impressively long scarf, suit, suit, suit...with a piece of celery, shining vibrant green still on the lapel. He glanced back at the Doctor, who just sort of shrugged. All the outfits tailored to different body types--odd. Viral made a mental note to ask why the man lugged around clothes for so many others if he was the last.

Oh. Nostalgia. That'd be why.

Black, black, brown, black, blue...oh. Viral lifted the jacket from the hanger, gazing at it. There was something about the decorations across the front that seemed...vaguely familar. Comforting. The Doctor wandered in a little farther, looking at the jacket Viral had picked.

"Hmmm, sort-of military. Kinda works for you, huh?"

"You grin too much."

"I've been told that, yeah."

"Indeed. This one," he held it out, unsure what to do with it. The Doctor's head cocked again.

"That one?" he chewed his lip, muttering something like, "ew, you don't want Jack's...", and ran to the other side of the room, and brought back another jacket; dark, deep blue, with lighter red accents, and small stripes of subtle white embroidery on the epaulettes. Viral just sort of stared, confused. The Doctor pointed at him, and made a sort of motion to stay.

_If he's saying I'm a dog..._Viral bemused, _I may just kill 'im.  
_

But the Doctor came back with a deep red dress shirt and a pair of black pants, and urged Viral to change, skirting out of the room with a strange speed. The beastman only shook his head and changed. As he shed his old, dusty uniform, he toed the pile of clothing the Doctor had left. He noticed, with a smirk, that the man had thought enough to leave undergarments. Or the ship had thought for him. Viral wasn't quite clear on how the TARDIS worked.

When the beastman emerged, the Doctor let out a low whistle.

"Dear God, he does clean up. Well, look at that."

The beastman crossed his arms, minding that he claws didn't shred the new jacket. It did look quite dashing, but the big fuzzy hands at the end of the sleeve sort of ruined the whole 'dashing' attempt.

"Most people do seem impressed that the beast cleans up well. There's just usually the assumption that I, you know, am too dumb to figure out a button."

The Doctor immediately looked sheepish.

"I'm so sorr--"

"Save it."

And a silence pervaded between them for a while, before the Doctor noticed that Viral had something hanging from one hand. He gently asked what it was. Viral lifted his paw and the small, pink headband was held gently his his hands. The Doctor took it, heart already hurting.

"Didn't seem like it belonged in there, and I doubt you clean up around here," he huffed, bitterness half-dissolving when he saw the look on the Doctor's face.

"It's um...yeah. It goes in there. I'll just..go..," he took a deep breath, rubbed his face and put it back. Viral only watched, curious. The Doctor half reemerged from the doorway (he had crouched to put the headband away), and tried to put his 'happy face' back on.

"That belonged to someone very close to you," Viral stated. It was not judgement. It was fact. The Doctor blew air past his lips, and rubbed the back of his neck.

"Her name..name's Rose. She was my...well, doesn't matter now. She's safe. She's okay. I'm okay," he breathed, eyes on the floor. When he looked up at Viral, he smiled, but it wasn't the same.

"I'm fine."

Viral shook his head.

"No, you're not."

Silence. Viral extended a hand to help the Doctor up, which the Time Lord took. The beastman walked towards the main deck, quickly ursurped in pace by the Doctor. They stood in front of the core, soft whirring filling the quiet.

"Where did she go?"

"Parallel Universe; they're all sealed off now, by the way; With her mum," the Doctor explained, noting the confused look on Viral's face.

"Oh, come on. That...'Ron fellow told me you fought in a battle where you threw galaxies at each other, and this is strange?"

"Well, I wouldn't be, if you actually said something instead of talking so damn much," Viral's tone was even. Suspicious. He had shown this man a side that he'd not even show to any other being, and it had happened against his will. And he knew almost nothing about the Doctor. A sense of distrust was always bound to be there.

"Right. Sorry," the Doctor sighed, "but yes. She's stuck there, but safe. And.., remember about the hand?"

Viral narrowed an eyebrow.

"Yes?"

"Big nasty mess, bad aliens, it regenerated into...well, I guess a clone or something. Never really figured it out, wasn't there. Anyway...he's there. With her. He can spend his life with her. Safe. She's safe and happy".

Viral crossed his misshapen arms again, a look of disbelief.

"Oh, what, you don't believe the clone thing? Because, you know..."

"No, I do. My creator lived as a head in a jar for 9 years."

"Ew, that's just...well, then what is it?"

"Why could'nt you stay?"

The Doctor stretched his arms over his head.

"Same reason you don't. Don't age--just...sort of...regenerate when I'm like, an inch from dying. Time Lord trick," he quipped.

"Huh"

"What?"

"...nothing."

Viral leaned on the railing. Wasn't the man smarter than that, than to get involved with people who would always be gone before him?Who he'd always have to leave behind?

Oh, right. Viral did that too. It irritated him, just a little, how alike they were.

"Hungry?"

"What?"

"Are. you. hungry?"

"I...suppose."

"Oh, great, because I have this great place in mind, where..."

Viral nodded, doing what he'd done when Rossiu had rambled on; tuned him out. His thoughts wandered to the memory of that beautiful woman; Tsuuma. How, sometimes, as he dreamed, he was a knight and she ran to his arms. Sometimes he would wake up and, though he'd tell no one, he'd want it to be real.

Viral rubbed his shoulder, noticing that the violent ride early had left a deep bruise that was still being healed.

No.

The dream couldn't be real. Not really. He didn't care.

Armor would be a bitch anyway.


	5. Elastic Band

_...another chapter. Enjoy! if you have any ideas for future prompts for a chapter, please email them to (take out the spaces), with the header "BreakfastEnd Of The World Prompts". Thanks!_

_And remember, I own nothing. Hell, right now I'm not even employed. tear_

_Thanks to Pseudo Epitet for the suggestion of a perception filter to hide our dear catshark's scarier attributes. As much as I adore him the way he is, you do have to admit that if you ran into him on the street, you'd be terrified._

_A/N: Ostia is a real place--it used to be the port city for Rome way way way back. Now, there's the modern city, and a beautiful archelogical site nearby. However, they probably did not hold big festivals to Dionysus (the god of wine) there, I'm just taking liberties.  
_

_Prompt: elastic band_

* * *

It began quietly enough.

Really, all they had done was landed on the small planet--the Doctor had promised wonderful things to the carnivorous Beastman, whose replies were curt.

Then the Doctor had insisted that he wear a special bracelet--he called it a perception filter--to hide his paws and the sharp rows of teeth in his mouth because "these people would probably try to kill him if they saw him". To which Viral had responded that he wished them luck. The Doctor's face soured and he cuffed the bracelet onto Viral's wide wrist. With a flicker, his features seemed to smooth; his carniverous shredding teeth leveling out into the perceived norm. His face, which had always seemed rougher due to his maw, softened considerably, though wear still showed on his face.

The beast man looked down at his hands in disgust. In place of his powerful, wrenching paws, two pink multi-digited appendages stared back up at him. He wiggled his fingers experimentally.

"They feel the same"

"Ah, yes, but there's the genius--it all feels the same to you. It just looks and feels different to someone else. But..just in case, I wouldn't shake hands."

"...I don't even know what that is."

"Then you're set!"

And then they had left, and after a few moments, Viral realized, with a heavy note of disgust, that his rather long hair presented a bit of a problem. He did not believe that even with this filter he looked anywhere close to threatening. Apparently the villagers of...oh, the man had called this "Ostia"...did not find his assertion to be true. The Doctor noticed the problem, and dug deep into his pockets, pulling out an elastic band.

"Ah, here it is! Let's pull that hair back--lord knows you look like a bloody terrifying wanderer--and maybe these folks'll stop eyeing you funny".

"Hn."

The Doctor handed Viral the elastic band, which the Beastman merely stared at.

"Right. Sorry. Forgot," he sputtered, and stepped behind the beastman and pulled his long hair together. Viral bristled at the contact, uneasy with having someone behind him that he didn't trust. The Doctor worked quickly, and the ponytail seemed to hold.

For about a minute.

The band snapped, and the Doctor frowned.

"Well, that isn't supposed to happen."

"Really?"

"...no, no, I've got it," the Time Lord babbled, pulling a thicker one from his pocket. This time, it held.

"There we are--brilliant!"

Viral merely rolled his eyes, and they continued walking.

"Why do you have so many of those, anyway? I thought those were just for females with long hair?"

"...Well, I've had a few women as my companions. And let me tell you, it's easier goings, escaping from a dalek when you can see where you're going."

"Da..oh never mind".

Then the streets had grown more crowded as people rushed in to celebrate a festival to a god that Viral had no idea about, but the Doctor said it involved alcohol and a ton of food, and all Viral needed to hear was food.

But as they stepped into the main building, with people lounging blissfully around them, the nobleman at the end of the Great Hall staggered to his feet and pointed at Viral.

"You there! With the golden eyes! Do you come before us in the spirit of Dionysus?"

Viral raised an eyebrow and looked at the Doctor.

"My friend here doesn't speak...,"

"I was not asking you, Doctor," the man continued, and the Doctor paled.

"I have a bad feeling about this," he mumbled to Viral.

"For if you don't come here in the spirit of our god of wine and song, stranger, well...you must have other motives."

The man now began to stumble towards him, but the beastman did not move.

"Why, oh golden-eyed man, do you torment me?"

Viral raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

"You take my best slave and show it freedom? How dare you?"

Viral glanced back at the Doctor.

"Now, we run," he spoke, and the two broke into a full run back to the TARDIS.

"Guards! SEIZE THOSE MEN!"

"How do you...always..do this?"

"It just...happens...I...swear...hurry!"

They fell into the TARDIS, and the Doctor bolted the door shut and got them going again.

"That was...ridiculous," Viral breathed, when he finally caught his breath again, "how can you deal with that?"

"It doesn't happen everywhere I go, you know. Sometimes I visit and nothing happens. Other times, I have a run in with something. Comes with wandering," the Doctor sighed.

"Uh-huh. But me? I don't even know that drunken ape?"

"Not yet," the Doctor spoke, noting the look on Viral's face, "time is..eh...not so easy to explain. Things can overlap. I try not to think about it too much; hurts the brain."

"I'd imagine it would," Viral drawled. The Doctor laughed.

"Are we making jokes or insults?"

Viral did not answer, only looked at the Doctor.

"What about your home?"

"What about it?"

"You've told me far too many times how enjoyable this planet or that planet or this time or that time will be fun. But what about your home?"

"Aw, beautiful place. Twin suns and a gorgeous city hall and just...trees with silver leaves. A brilliant red sky...," he trailed, growing quiet. Viral did not speak, only rested his hand on the Doctor's shoulder.

He understood. The Doctor did not need to continue. They stood in somber silence for a moment before a loud beeping startled Viral. The beastman emitted what sounded like a low shreik, a sound which seemed to amuse the Doctor. The beastman only sighed and folded his arms.

"Oh, my...hm..message."

"pa..th...Doc...tor...DOCTOR. ARE YOU THERE? IT'S JACK HARKNESS. Hello! You're not out, I can tell you're there!"

"Yeah, right here Jack. Martha there too?"

Doctor Martha Jones poked her head out from the side of the screen.

"Hello!"

"There you are. No more UNIT--I see you're with Torchwood. Good girl. Now, I hope you're not calling me to tell me something bad's happened, because...,"

"Who's that?"

Martha pointed into the screen in Viral's general direction. The beastman had taken off his perception filter and was stretching. He narrowed golden eyes at the screen. Jack seemed to smile.

"No, Jack."

"I didn't..."

"No."

"But who is he? And where's Donna?"

"Home. It's a long story, can we talk about it later? That's Viral...came from New Earth millenia before Earth colonized it. There were two whole thriving cycles of civilzation there before they got there, can you believe that? Oh, glorious!"

"What is..."

"A beastman," Viral replied, not moving from where he was. The two Torchwood members exchanged a look.

"Oh, just tell me what it is. Big kitty there had a little trouble in Ostia. One of those times when you travel to a place after you've traveled there in the future."

"...Oh..kay. Torchwood needs to discuss some things with you in person."

"I already told you, Jack. I want nothing to do with Torchwood," his face grew cold, his voice like steel.

"But,"

"No, Jack. Not after that Christmas."

"I understand"

"But...I suppose I could visit. Even if I was just there."

"A year and a half a go!" Martha chimed in.

"Has it really been that long? Gosh, I just sort of...well, whatever. Maybe I will."

"Try to land here on the first try, Doc."

"aha ha ha, Jack," the Doctor grinned, " very funny. See you."

"Old friends?"

"Yeah."

"Do I really have to meet him? That Jack fellow seems...annoying. I had a commander like him--loud, forward, brash."

"Really?"

"...yes."

"How long did you serve under him?"

"...probably a week. Then the Brigade killed him," Viral pinched the bridge of his nose. Why did he keep telling this man things? Did he think the man would even care? He could not fathom this man with eyes so old and a face so young and who talked but never spoke. When the beastman looked up again, he could see a question hanging in the Doctor's eyes.

"...he looked like someone had strangled a large bird and then worn it. I hated working under him. At least Adiane used a good tactic to motivate her troops"

And the same question.

"OH FOR THE LOVE OF...SHE had a scorpion tail. GOOD NIGHT"

Viral left the bridge, chosing tonight to curl up in a spare room. The Doctor sat on the bridge, laughing softly to himself. He hoped that somewhere along the way, Viral would find a place he could not bear to part with, and stay there. The beastman really was not aware of how long the Doctor had stood in Teppelin and watched the beastman pass.

Most of it was because the TARDIS could not warp elsewhere. But he knew Viral was cold, and would probably never open up to him. But he hoped to befriend the beastman. It was nice to not have to fear for his companion's life so often.


	6. Music for the Fading Past

_Wow, I haven't updated for a while, have I? Too distracted by other things, I suppose. Here's the new chapter, with some deeper, kind of more depressing stuff, since we're talking anti-spirals and daleks, which are good for all sorts of hurt all around. And whoohoo I finally have a job! Perhaps two! Awesome._

And warning now, since I forgot to warn before--there are always going to be a ton of spoilers about both series, because I've seen the full run of each (well, through the end of series 4 of Dr. Who, and that's as far as we've been with Ten so far, and there is little to no new TTGL except the movies and the Parallel Works)

_  
Also--this one-shot's not all depressing; there's a short that was made to go along with the Dr. Who PROMS (it's a UK thing, I think, as I was unaware that proms meant a big ol' orchestra) where the Doctor composes a little song and gives it to the orchestra to play (it was a multimedia Proms I suppose, because he throws the sheet music down to the orchestra, as well as remarks on a Graske running around on stage or something. It's cute, and I wanted to mention it because it was pretty much him trying to get over his loneliness because GOD DAMN SERIES FOUR for ending like that, him just standing alone in the console room of the TARDIS. Oooh, man. But yeah, go youtube "Music of the Spheres" and see Tennant be ridiculous. (He does make silly faces)  
_

_And I really should show some happier aspects of the Doctor. I just wanted Viral to remark on the scary, disturbing side of the Doctor we see in episodes like "The Runaway Bride" (with the Racnos) and "Family of Blood" (where the family is imprisoned forever)_.  
_  
Next chapter will maybe (I think) be a crossover with one of my more favored series, STARGATE SG1. When Colonel O'Neil was still there because FarscapeGuy is...not as awesome as MacGuyver. Possibly. I could be having them end up at Torchwood, where I can correct the earlier blunder with Ten being okay with Martha working for Torchwood--he likes neither Torchwood nor UNIT._

_As always--if I owned either, I would be the luckiest girl ever.  
_

_Theme: enemies, music_

_Title: Music for the Fading Past  
_

* * *

"You were a soldier," Viral spoke as the Doctor firmly locked the door to the TARDIS, only surprised when there was a sharp thud against the door. The Doctor looked back at it warily and stepped past Viral.

"What?"

The Time Lord knew the beastman was not one of many words, and to repeat himself would not bode well.

"You must have been a soldier at one point. Behind all that compassion, I can see something cold. Militaristic," Viral responded, taking off his perception filter and leveling a look at the Doctor, who only played dumb.

"You've killed."

A long stretch of silence.

"So have you."

"I am not ashamed of my service, Doctor. I took down those humans as I was told, and I am not ashamed for it, nor do I believe hearing the reasoning for it later made it any less defensible. It does not make any sense to be ashamed of your past actions."

The Doctor only stared at Viral for a moment, but the cold anger simmering in his eyes was enough to dumbfound the beastman for a moment. This man was far deeper, far darker, than anyone could understand.

"Why did you kill them?"

"What?" Viral's ears perked after another long silence.

"The humans."

Viral huffed and unfolded his arms.

"There was a race, the anti-spirals. Long before my creation, there had been a war. They left the moon as an executioner--something to destroy the planet when the human population grew too large," he explained, folding his arms again and looking at the Doctor.

"If it makes you feel better, most were not foolish enough to live on the surface. There were not many. I joined the humans in the end, and the anti-spirals were defeated."

The Doctor still only looked at Viral, eyes cold. He was not unhappy. But he was not angry. He was...nothing. He was unreadable, and for the first time since he had begun to travel with the Doctor, Viral felt truly uneasy.

"I suppose you're going to leave me the next place this thing stops."

"Human energy spirals. That is why they were detectable by the anti-spirals, correct? Beastmen have none, which is why you and your comrades were fine living on the surface."

Viral narrowed his eyes.

"How long were you in Teppelin, really?"

The Doctor's melancholy remained, but he spoke quicker now, moved about. He was not as intense, but he began to try to hide the dark again. Like always.

"A few weeks. Lovely city, beautiful. Big library full of records, and video. Lots of video."

Viral did not respond.

"They are not the only race like that, you know. One that always gets everything while you suffer."

"You saw the wedding", Viral replied, not a question, but a statement. No names--he did not wish to remember the hurt in Simon's eyes. Wished not to remember Nia's gentle hands helping him button his shirt, much to his embarassment and her amusement. Her laugh shined like the stars.

The Doctor nodded.

"The first and last princess. So many lost. And, " here the Doctor looked right at Viral, "they just decided to step out of existence. No real defeat except an empty promise not to come back"

"You were a soldier."

"Long ago. My planet burned because of it--because my race locked itself into a war with an enemy who didn't care who lived or died. My people," the Doctor's breath was ragged, seething with anger. Viral watched his body language carefully, wondering if he should step closer.

"I lose everything, and they never ever stop".

Viral stepped closer, but still did not touch the man from Gallifrey.

"The Lonely God, last of his kind."

The Doctor looked up, trying to settle his emotions. God forbid he ever break down and weep--at least, in front of another. He had done that once--as the Master lay in his arms, broken and dying. A thousand years of anguish and grief washed upon him that day, and he hadn't stopped weeping until his eyes refused to let another tear through. He could not let that happen again--though as he walked away from Rose at Bad Wolf Bay for the final (truly last and final) time, he felt it again, and as Donna had begged for her memories, it returned, but he had not wept. Rose would never have liked it, and Donna would have struck him square in the head and told him to get over it.

"The people of Teppelin have all sorts of names for me. Surely you noticed in your research, Doctor. But I think their favorite is the Lonely God; which they hold in the same regard as their trash, of course. There is nothing normal, nothing natural about a beastman to them. It's why I don't stay there. I never did."

"You are a very unsettling man, and I wonder at the common sense of anyone who would want to know everything about you. I have eternity to process it and," Viral continued hestiantly, "I'm not sure I would want to."

The Doctor took one look at Viral and laughed. Small, quiet, but a laugh.

"Who would? I'm a terrible man."

"Indeed. I've had enough knowing about your past. You aren't getting a damn bit of mine."

And the Doctor laughed clear and strong now, and Viral furrowed his brow.

"What?"

"Nothing"

"WHAT?"

The Doctor waved his hands in a dismissive gesture and swiftly dodge Viral's paw, which had been reaching for his arm.

"Nevermind, Viral."

The beastman folded his arms and huffed. The Doctor smiled and turned some knobs on the TARDIS's console. He began his typical mad dash around the core, and Viral stepped back.

"You are a madman," he muttered.

"Course I am! If I was sane, this'd never work!"

Viral shook his head, and grinned. Small and quick, but he smiled. The Doctor gestured for him to help, and the Beastman took a few steps forward before the TARDIS pitched sideways and threw him into the railing with tremendous force. He coughed, and held fast to the railing.

"You are a mad, mad bastard."

The Doctor only grinned. Viral wondered in his mind if he was growing to like this mad "time lord" who was always in danger and yet, would be such a danger if he was not such a staunch believer in every being's right to live. He had killed enough, seen enough death--he reached the point where he had no other choice but to save them because he was so disgusted over his past actions.

Viral wondered if he'd had a moment like that, but promptly faded from his mind as the TARDIS pitched again.

"HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN PILOTING THIS?"

The Doctor held fast to the railing (by this time the TARDIS had flipped clear upside down and he looked rather strange counting on his fingers upside down), and announced, "930 years!"

"AND YOU STILL CAN'T DRIVE IT?"

"NOPE!"

Ah, there it was. Viral noticed for the first time why this man drew so many people to him. He was a disturbing, dark, fathomless man with such an appreciation for life not because his own was so short, but because all he had left were companions who he brought along to feel like he was making a difference.

As to why he chose a strange man from a planet he'd clearly been to before (Viral was under the impression that the Doctor rather prefered female company, which Viral was eternally grateful for), well, the beastman was completely clueless. Almost as clueless as the Time Lord himself.

Perhaps, Viral thought, he just wanted a companion who understood what a damn fragile thing time really was.

Nah. Not that, either. He couldn't tell, and frankly, he didn't want to be in that mind.

It was too crowded, too deep and far too bleak.

"Oh, I've got music! I forgot!" the Doctor announced when the ride had leveled out (and righted itself). He punched a few buttons and turned a few knobs and the beastman heard a strangely harmonious dischord echo through the console room. He did not speak.

"Ode to Universe"

"It's..."

"The gravity patterns of all the planets and the galaxies and suns revolving around each other, fed through a harmonic filter here in the TARDIS. Well, my spin on it. Left my original copy with the orchestra during the proms at Albert Hall," the Doctor explained, a dreamy look in his face. He swooned, which Viral only rolled his eyes at, and began to saunter around the floor, waving his arms as if conducting, and made the most ridiculous face. Viral rested his paw on the Doctor's shoulder.

"Don't do that"

The Doctor cocked his head, and stepped slightly away, and continued his actions.

"No, really, don't do that."


	7. Strangers Like Us

_I swear, one day, I will write happier Doctor. I swear! But that's the beauty of the Doctor--he's so much deeper a character than you'd expect. He's burdened by his 'immortality', rather than seeing it as a gift. And I'll hopefully be clarifying why, for you Whovians, the Doctor's okay with Viral existing forever, and not with Jack, or rather, my idea, XP_

_Some crossovers that should be coming up--Stargate SG1, Hellsing: The Dawn, and so on. But this chapter's been brewing in my head for a while. AND YES, eventually we'll get back to Cardiff and Torchwood and Jack and Martha and the gang. But for now, one of my very favorite characters from one of my very favorite shows, because you just KNOW if he and the Doctor met, they'd get along._

_I am also borrowing the idea of Viral having gills from the wonderful Jaswinder and her TTGL story, "Crush". GO READ IT. It may even be on the same page as this._

_...man, I still can't believe I have a job again! YAY. Also possibly auditions for a community theatre's production of "The Jungle", but that's only if I run over to my college tomorrow and cold read from the script. And don't wake up sick as a dog, which is what's feeling like what's going to happen._

_And wow, Viral in the dub saying "that is how I roll". WOW. And WOW, LONG CHAPTER IS LONG.  
_

_  
As always, I own nothing.  
_

_Title: Strangers Like Us_

Theme: comfort, tears, sand

* * *

WOOMPH.

Viral shook his head and reached down into the soft sand and yanked the Time Lord to his feet. The man from Gallifrey dusted his pinstripe suit and shook himself free of extra sand.

"Watch your step next time," Viral huffed, and breathed deeply before forcefully pushing the air out the small, functioning gills on his neck. They were almost invisible, but fully functional--not that he'd had to swim lately. Sand in them had always put him in edge and frustrated him, so he often used this method to cool his head. It was a measured, practiced thing.

He became so concentrated on walking and keeping up this routine that he did not notice the Doctor's eyes firmly fixed to him, and a wide grin on the man's face. Viral rolled his his eyes and crossed his arms, the perception filter shifting on his wide wrist in a silent, disapproving gesture.

"You are a beauty of nature, you really are. Functioning gills?"

Damn. He thought the man hadn't noticed. In all of his long years, the only people who he figured to even have known were his creator and Leeron (how the mechanic had figured out that the land-dwelling beastman possessed functioning gills, he really did not want to know).

Viral grumbled in response, and the Doctor came closer. Viral bristled and shifted away, and the Doctor took the hint.

"It is amazing, though. Your creator was a genius."

"Some would say."

There was a moment of slilence between them as they made their way to town from where the Tardis had landed.

"No shenangians this time, I promise!. Enjoy yourself!" he had said. Viral had glared and repeated that he was only on this trip because of boredom. The Doctor seemed to not hear.

Then they had gotten the TARDIS wedged into the sand and had spent four hours digging it out, thankfully, near a town.

"Do you know where we are? Really?"

"Of course I do, it's...uh..."

"We are not lost."

"Well..."

Viral pinched the bridge of his nose. Kamina was unlearned, so his taunts were childish and rarely hit. Simon's directional skills had barely managed to get them in the right place to be extracted from prison. They were unlearned. They had a semblance of an excuse.

This man was almost a millenia old. HOW could he make a simple mistake like getting lost, and landing them on a hostile planet?

"OOOH,I remember now! It's Gunsmoke! Big lovely desert, great folks. It's like if the Wild West had shifted onto another planet!"

"Wild...west?"

The Doctor gave Viral a sympathetic look, which the beastman did not cotton to. His lips pursed and he shook his head.

"I really need to teach you some earth history. Otherwise you're not going to get half of what's going on."

"I don't get what's going on now," the beastman snarled softly, not wanting the villagers to suspect anything.

"Well, true."

"You are a dumb ass," Viral shook his head, "is there something that we need?"

"When was the last time you had a good, stiff drink, my friend?"

...

As much as he hated to admit it (and he was absolutely LOATHE to admit it), the Doctor was right. This place did serve wondrous alcohol. The days he had fought alongside the humans, keeping them safe underground as Rossiu had pressed forward and forced them to the surface, he had often been thanked by an invitation to dinner, or payment in fine spirits. Because they were not regulated, the folks underground could brew as strong or as weak as they wanted, and came up with the most wonderful drinks. When they had all been forced above, he had taken that last wineskin full of whiskey and, knowing his capture was imminent, sat and made a toast to his comrades long passed. And one silent, quick toast to his creator. Then he had dumped the little that was left after he was finished into the fire and watched the flash light up the sky (it was strong proof, but being immortal, Viral paid little heed to threats of alcohol poisoning).

The next morning he had been captured and thrown in prison.

This place had liquor that almost matched the quality he had grown used to, but there was still nothing like finely brewed underground spirits.

"I told you it was good," the Doctor smiled, sipping on a small glass of something Viral couldn't place the name of. They sat and observed the crowd; rough, lonely souls with skin tanned leather by the sun, who kept to themselves. There wasn't much conversation between the two men, but as they drank, the Doctor noticed another blonde enter.

This man was taller than Viral by about a foot, and was dressed in a bizarre leather trenchcoat (Viral noticed the man as well and an eyebrow raised as to the practicality of leather in temperatures like Gunsmoke's. He huffed again, sending air back out through his gills). He entered quietly, and barely ordered. This new man sat by the other two, silent.

The rest of the bar barely looked back, too content in their own warm worlds to pay a stranger any heed.

Through the sand assaulting his sense of smell, Viral picked up a trace of something...different. Cleaner, older, strange, with the musk of gunpowder and metal. And it seemed to be coming from the tall stranger sitting near them. The beastman lifted his head, and the Doctor looked over.

Ah, good, Viral thought, he noticed it too. This quiet man was not human.

The bar suddenly buzzed as another stranger busted through the doors, hollering about a bounty. The bar seemed unconcerned, and the stranger grew angry. He pulled out a gun and cocked it, aiming for the blonde stranger, who only quietly nursed a drink. The blonde paid notice to his attacker, yellow-red tinged glasses low on his nose. He looked, and pushed the glasses back up the bridge of his nose. He did not care.

Now the other stranger was seething. The blonde still did not react, and Viral watched the assailant's body language, anxiously. He did not have the strength to pull the trigger. Few ever did. The Doctor seemed to be moving for something in his jacket pocket, but Viral shook his head.

"The kid won't do it. Look at how he holds himself; he's terrified."

There was still no reaction from the tall blonde stranger.

"It's your fault!" the younger stranger screamed, "It's your fault they're all dead! If you hadn't come, they'd be," he continued, the gun shaking in his hands. The blonde did not speak, but you could almost feel his features fall. The Doctor looked on in a distant shock--as if he'd heard those words before. He probably had, too many times to count. His jaw was set, but he made no other movements.

Suddenly then, almost too quiet to hear in the frightened chatter of the bar.

"I'm sorry. I know it means nothing, but I'm sorry."

Viral was stunned--an admission and an apology? Why? What sort of man was this?

"It still won't bring them back! I'll turn you in and...and get enough money to get us kids to a safer city. They don't need you alive!" the young man continued to scream. The blonde looked up, into the young man's eyes.

"I'm sorry."

The barrel of the gun was but two feet from his face. He was distant, unfazed.

"I HATE YOU!"

Viral and the Doctor both winced. Viral recalled the day he'd simply been fetching water at the outskirts of Teppelin. A child had begun yelling and throwing rocks at the beastman, horrified to discover that the wounds he was making healed just as quickly as he made them.

The Doctor bit his tongue and swallowed a sigh. There was a phrase he'd heard often. Too often. Too much hate--especially from those he cherished the most.

There was the sound of a gun going off, but as the confusion cleared, the blonde had deftly avoided the bullet and now stood behind the child.

"What does violence accomplish? So if you killed me, and someone worse comes along, what do you do?"

The young man shook, dropping to his knees. The blonde stranger left, and almost in a split second (it was odd how quickly they were learning to work together) the plan to follow him had been worked out. In minutes, they had paid their bill and followed the man out of the bar.

As they walked several paces away, Viral noticed a Wanted poster nailed to an older building. He tore it neatly from the building it had been posted on, recalling when he had seen the Wanted poster of himself--snarling and vicious, to terrify the public.

"Vash the Stampede. Wanted, dead or alive. 60 billion reward."

--  
They caught up with the man, this Vash the Stampede. He wasn't running--just walking, coat flapping in the wind. Somehow through the wind and the sand, he heard them and turned.

"What do you want?" he called over the wind. His hand slid to the gun holstered by his hip. Viral shifted into a fighting stance out of habit.

"To talk!" the Doctor shouted, "We are unarmed--I simply wish to talk."

The man finally looked up, hand still on his gun.

"Why?"

The Doctor faltered. Why did he want to talk? Was he just curious? Wasn't that all it ever was?

Viral still had not moved from his stance, but now he spoke.

"You're not human. That's a strange thing on a planet stuffed with the monkeys, isn't it?"

Vash's hand dropped, and his jaw set.

"What? That's...how could you know?"

"I think," the Doctor responded as the wind lulled momentarily, "the better question is how could someone not? You're a good foot taller than half the men around here and frankly you just smell of something different."

Vash gave a questioning look to Viral, who only shrugged.

"What do you want? The reward?"

"Nah, travel too much, can't be bothered for it. What I really want to know is," here the Doctor stepped closer, "what a Plant hybrid is doing among the people."

The blonde's eyes went wide, and he finally looked the Doctor square in the eye. Those eyes--a man so young with eyes so old. It was unsettling, really.

"We should get out of the wind. Might be easier to talk," the Doctor spoke, making for a small, abandoned house nearby. He patted Viral, who was still crouched and ready to fight, on the head.

"Down, kitty."

Viral stood, claws extended and retracted invisibly beneath the perception filter.

"You are very lucky indeed that you're my transport, Doctor," the beastman mumbled, following the Doctor. Viral cast a glance backwards at the tall, broom-headed man, who was stockstill in the sand.

"Are you coming?"

Vash followed.

--

The abandoned home offered little shelter from the wind and sand, but enough to bring down the noise around them. The Doctor and the Plant sat at a table--Viral kept watch out of habit.

"Who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor"

"Yeah, sure, Doctor Who?"

Viral snickered, and was rewarded with a sour look from the Doctor. He didn't care.

"Just...the Doctor."

"No name?"

"Not for a long time, no. Don't you have an actual name too?"

"Well, I don't...i mean, I," the blonde was nonplussed, unsure of what to think anymore. His voice was still very quiet.

"Not human--Time Lord. Gallifrey. Constellation of Kasterborous, if you want to be specific," the Doctor prattled, crossing his arms.

"So why are you here?"

"Boredom, mostly. That, and I'm homeless, if you're being technical. And curiousity, which is why that big kitty over yonder is with me."

"Big ki--"

The Doctor looked up, and urged Viral to take off the perception filter.

"Well? Go on then."

Viral rolled his eyes, uncaring. What did it matter if this strange tall man was frightened of a beastman? Good lord, that sand was irritating. He huffed again, sending the air out his gills. The other blonde was stunned.

"See, Viral there, he's got this interesting problem. He can't die--as I suppose neither can you."

Vash only looked again at Viral, who was quiet.

"I was meant to carry a story of victory forward for eternity. Didn't quite work out that way," he muttered.

The Plant's attention turned back to the Doctor.

"So is he your muscle? What do you want?"

"I've been here before, and nothing good comes of Plant-hybrids among humans. I saw a massacre last time."

"That was," Vash stood, tears brimming in his eyes, "not me. I tried to stop him. It wasn't me!"

"Who was it, then?"

"Kn--It was not me."

Viral hrmphed and walked closer.

"Then who?"

Vash looked away, and the Doctor gave Viral a dissapproving look. The beastman shrugged and strolled elsewhere. Standing still was making him jumpy.

"If you're going to kill me," the plant muttered, "then do it. He's gone, Wolfwood is gone and I...it's just me. No more senseless violence. It's just me, only me, from now on, it's...," Vash's breath hitched, and the Doctor's stern face softened, and sympathy played in his eyes. He stood and put an arm around the blonde's wide shoulders. Vash looked up, confused. He pushed the Doctor away.

"What could you know!" the plant hissed, tears threatening to spill.

"More than you know," the Doctor's eyes seemed to harden. Like steel, "I have watched most of the people I...I care about die. Too many. I am the last of the Time Lords. You are just a child."

There was an unnatural silence in the room for a moment.

"But," the Doctor leaned down, "I know it never gets easier. But look at those brilliant humans, so full of flaws and creativity and the capacity for such great things! You just...have to make sure they don't get hurt. That's the hardest part."

"I killed my brother," the plant whispered, tears spilling down his face, leaving streaks through the fine dust the sand had coated his face with. The Doctor held the plant-hybrid's shoulders, and embraced him.

"I know. It's alright. It's alright."

Viral looked on, half-disgusted. The other half was intrigued; why exactly did the Doctor come to Gunsmoke? Did he really think that this man before him--shaking and childlike--was responsible for a massacare? Or did he really know who the man was all along, and, longing for some sort of selfish satisfaction in helping another, want to share something about himself, but really didn't want to disclose anything?

Was that why Viral was there? Because they were alike?

--

Eventually someone had come and eventually they had seen the plant hybrid fight. And eventually, the plant-hybrid had been hurt, and they had helped him away after Viral had frightened the man off. The Doctor began to help Vash shed his coat, but the man refused.

"I'll be fine I just...augh!" Vash clenched his teeth and struggled to stand. Viral grabbed Vash's shoulder and pinned it to the ground.

"You were shot," he stated, and pulled the coat open. Blood flowed from the wounds in his stomach, drenching his dark shirt (another wonder--how did this man survive? Black clothing and leather in the desert. Really). The Doctor ripped the shirt from hem to collar and set it to the side, only to see what he had exposed.

Deep scars--newer ones and old ones and ancient ones and large bits of flesh totally absent. The plant pulled his coat closed and struggled to his feet. He did not speak, only limped past them.

"Can't you heal?"

"Why should I? I need to remember what I am. So I never become him."

"Ah," the Doctor whispered softly to himself. The Time Lord suddenly remembered something.

"Tell me, how old are you?"

"154 years old," he replied, turning to face the Doctor, "what about you? And him?" Vash gestured to Viral.

"Oh, lord, um..910, last time I checked. And about 70 years for him, I think"

And for a moment, there was silence. Then a laugh. Soft and unsteady, but still there.

"Man, you're ancient."

"I keep hearing that, but I never quite believe it," the Time Lord smiled, then gestured at Vash's chest, "I can stitch up the new ones, you know. I do have my moments."

"It's fine. They're already healing, see," and Vash withdrew his hand from his side and two slugs sat in the middle of his blood-stained palm.

"You keep yourself out of trouble then," the Doctor smiled.

As they walked back through the sand and wind to the TARDIS, Viral was puzzled.

"Why?" he asked as they reentered the box. He never asked why, unless the question vexed him enough that he couldn't sleep until it was answered. After Lord Genome had granted him immortality, he thought better of asking.

"Why what?"

"You knew he'd be here."

"That's ridiculous--how could I have? God knows there's nothing to judge dates by on Gunsmoke anyway."

"Is this really how you do things? You are one man one minute and another the next? Why do you do that?"

"Oh," the Doctor leaned against the console and blew a stream of air from pursed lips for a moment, "hell if I know."

Viral cocked his head, thoroughly irked.

"You are an unsettling man."

"Yeah. I know."

Silences were common between the Doctor and the beastman. Viral didn't much talk and conversations tend to end quickly with only one side to them. Viral retired to the kitchen, and the Doctor stayed in the console room, quietly tinkering away.

Perhaps he should take Jack up on the offer to visit--though far from Torchwood, if he had a choice. But this beastman was greatly troubled by him. For the first time in his long travels, here he had a companion who he could quite certainly determine would never trust him. Perhaps that was due to Viral's long history as a solider, trained in close combat.

Where was he? Oh, Jack. He did not mind the man, but the things Jack had done...well, he just didn't like the things that Jack did. It wasn't Jack's fault that he was immortal (or possibly not, if he really was the posterboy for the Boeshane Peninsula--the "face of boe"). Why was this strange man before him any different?

Perhaps it was because Viral had removed himself from everything after that final battle, whereas Jack had thrown himself into working for Torchwood. Perhaps.


	8. Visiting

_Alright, finally updating again! (Mostly because even though I feel like I should be sleeping, I'd like to stay awake to watch some more Futurama, hehe). Here we're meeting up again with a few very special friends of the Doctors. I have been so anxious to write Jack, especially after having watched "Boom Town" (series 1). OH DEAR GOD, THERE IS SOME LOVE THERE. Please to excuse grammar/spelling, as I'm under the weather and being all forgetful.  
_

_ A note: All of Viral's adventures will be with the Tenth Doctor, as mentioned in the first chapter. In addition, I'm fairly sure I'll be wrapping this up by the end of the year/ early next year, so as to have it complete by the time the first special airs for 09. Recent news aside, I never envisioned Viral being around when a regeneration happened. That's far too big an event to be described/tackled here.  
PS: I've been to Cardiff--it's a very very pretty place, and I would love to go back again. (Unfortunately, I was not able to get to the Dr. Who exhibit while i was there, but perhaps SOON)_

_Also--we may be seeing some hints as to why that guy in Ostia was so hostile towards Viral in the coming chapters. I think now we're about halfway through the story (which I really should finish plotting out how it's going to conclude). In the coming weeks, I am also buckling down on my college work, as well as working a ton of more hours so I may not be around as much. The same goes for the next year or two, since I intend on finishing my AFA at the community college with a fantastic GPA so that I can get a good scholarship to attend a good university away from where I currently live._

_Title: Visting._

_---------------------------------------------_

There was something different about Cardiff, Wales. The sky was clear and bright, a cool breeze blew, and there was the distinct smell of a harbor lined with shops. A cozy place.

Viral stepped from the TARDIS and stretched his arms skyward before rolling his shoulders and his back, giving off a not entirely feline impression. The Doctor surpressed a giggle, but with his sharp hearing, the beastman turned around and glared. The Doctor lifted his hands in a gesture of peace and began to stroll away from the TARDIS. Viral joined him within a few seconds, once again wearing the perception filter. The beastman glanced back at the TARDIS, sitting unnoticed against a wall.

"Aren't you concerned that someone might get in there?"

"Nah, locked the door, and besides, no one ever thinks anything of a telephone box on the street corner. Plus, we'll only be here a few hours. Now come on, let's go."

"To where, precisely?"

"Where" turned out to be a tower not far from where they had landed. But they did not enter. Instead, the Doctor retrieved a mobile from his pocket and punched in a long string of numbers. Viral heard, very faintly, from the earpiece, a curt, professional greeting before the Time Lord introduced himself. There was a loud clang and then an even louder voice. This voice was arrogant and brash and full of joy.

"DOCTOR?"

The time lord pulled the mobile away from his ear, a little surprised. He replaced it a moment later. "Yes, Jack. It's me."

"Oh, fantastic!"

(Here a small smile tugged at the Doctor's lips.)

"Martha, come on, let's go!"

"Jack, what're you..."

"Come on!"

"Wha-OH," and then a lot of clattering before the signal cut off. Viral cocked an eyebrow, thoroughly confused as to what that had been all about. Three minutes later, the beastman got his answer as a blur of blue and white barreled out of the lobby doors and tackled the Doctor in a monstrous hug. A moment later, a young woman followed him, smiling and just radiating happiness. The beastman seemed totally ignored for a moment, and suddenly it was like he was home again--like he didn't exist. Once again on the outside. He looked past them, at the building they'd emerged from. Distantly, he heard them talking to each other.

"I thought you were coming right away, but it's been ages!"

"Really?" there was a note of concern in the Doctor's voice, as if he'd meant to delay the trip. "How long?"

"Three years, Doctor," the woman spoke, "but it's good to see you again"

"You've been with Torchwood all this time, I see, Martha"

The Time Lord smiled for a moment, before remembering that Viral was with him. The Doctor pulled the beastman over by the arm and propped Viral up in front of himself.

" Viral, Captain Jack Harkness and Doctor Martha Jones. Martha, Jack, Viral."

The beastman blinked several times, not used to someone pulling him around. By the looks of it, Martha and Jack were just as confused, because they just sort of stared at him for moment. Jack was the first to recover, extending his hand with a grin and a sparkle in his eye that was disturbingly familiar.

"Hi. Captain Jack Harkness. Pleased to meet you."

Viral looked at the extended hand, and tentatively placed his hand in the other man's. Jack gave a firm shake, and was still smiling. The beastman only narrowed his eyes and released his hand.

"Stop it."

The Doctor and Martha laughed, while Jack looked a little flustered. Martha introduced herself, small and tiny but full of fire. She took one of Viral's wide hands in both of her small ones and shook it. She smiled up at him, and the beastman felt compelled to smile back.

"Come inside, it's nicer in there. And you can take that thing," Captain Jack gestured to the perception filter, "off when we reach Torchwood."

Martha gave Jack a questioning look.

"It looks like the same guy as before, just less...beastly. Figured he was wearing some sort of filter to change his look".

"If we can...avoid the offices please. I'd rather not be there. Isn't there somewhere else in this building where we can see the sky?"

"My office..Martha's too...totally safe. No wires, no bugs...completely safe. I swear."

"Jack..."

"I'm not as foolish as to trick you, Doctor"

...........................................................................................

After a long lift ride, they arrived at the Torchwood offices. Viral was quiet the ride down, distant as the old friends chattered away. Halfway through the ride, it went silent and Viral realized that the Doctor had directed something at him. Viral did not respond audibly,only looked back at him.

"You can take the filter off, if you want."

Viral shrugged and undid the clasp. In a visible shudder, the smoother image disappeared. In its place, a tanned and deeply lined face revealed itself. He crossed his arms and one wide paw draped over his arm. Captain Jack seemed unphased, Martha... a little startled.

"Ah, so you're not..."

"Human. No," he replied--not a harsh retort but fact. Martha still paled, and Viral stepped away from her as much as he could. She looked puzzled, but the beastman said nothing.

When they finally reached the offices, it felt like an eternity had passed. Jack escorted them to his office, and while the rest of the group passed relatively unnoticed, Viral felt more than one pair of eyes bore into his back. He flexed his claws at his sides to relieve the tension within him. There was a lot of talking about things Viral did not know about--about where the Doctor had wandered before Kamina City, about where he'd gone after 'that day'. The Doctor answered hesitantly, but did not seem stunned until someone mentioned Donna.

He bit his lip and bowed his head and sighed.

"She couldn't take it--all that knowledge. It was killing her. The only way to save her was to take anything about me away."

"You don't mean that you...," Martha started, a little concerned. The Doctor nodded, sadness threatening his eyes. Viral stood in the corner, looking on. Always loss, for the both of them. Nothing ever stayed.

"Yes. She's fine now...," the Doctor was distant, "just remembers nothing"

Martha looked stunned and a little hurt. Jack approached his next line with caution.

"What about Rose?"

The Doctor sat in muted silence for a moment, and Viral looked over. He had seen that look before--on Simon, when he had encountered the digger some years back. Viral had mentioned Nia and though it had been years--Simon was well into his fifties--that intense yet muted pain was unmistakable. After a long stretch, the Time Lord spoke again.

"She's fine. She's with him, back in the other universe. He's human--he can age. They're fine," he sighed. Jack smiled sadly.

"You know, you never would have told anyone any of that before," the Captain responded. The Doctor smiled weakly, and looked up at Jack.

"I do suppose you're right. That's all her, you know."

Martha smiled.

"We know".

"SO!" the Doctor clapped, "enough with the depressing, whose hungry?"

"I think it's just about time for lunch. Maybe Ianto brought something for you today, Jack," Martha joked. The Doctor looked nonplussed for a moment, and then Ianto showed himself.

"Jack? You hungry?"

Martha stifled a laugh. Jack gave a look and grinned.

"Of course. Where were you thinking?"

"Well..."

With that Jack was gone. The Doctor pointed after them.

"Is that...are he and Jack..."

"Yeah," Martha grinned, "they are." The Doctor laughed, and shook his head.

"Honestly, that man...," he muttered, following the pair out to ask about food---he hadn't truly been to Cardiff since Canary Wharf, and that was ages upon ages ago; almost another life. Almost. Viral and Martha were left alone in the room, in awkward silence. Martha almost made to leave, unable to when she felt Viral's eyes on her back.

In his defense, he had rarely seen any human with a skin color like hers. The majority of the residents of Kamina City, as well as the rest of his world came from underground, and for some reason or other, dark skin had never been prevalent. But that was not why he was staring.

"Um, Viral was it?"

"Yes," he replied, immediately looking away. There was something about this woman that intrigued him, and he could not figure it out. Unlike Kamina, he would not barrel headfirst into something, especially something like this odd feeling.

"Where, exactly did you come from?" she asked, the tone in her voice reflecting genuine curiosity, "I mean, I've been all over with the Doctor, but we were always the aliens. Well, I was, I guess. But I don't recall many coming here."

"Earth," he responded, trying to keep his answers short. He did not mean to be rude, it was just not in his nature to talk much any more.

"Earth? Like here?"

"We called it Earth. I was unaware that much else besides our planet and one other had life, and know no other names for it."

"Ah."

The silence reinstated itself, cumbersome and odd. Martha attempted to start up a conversation again, her mind trying to convince her that such an idea was probably not the best.

"So, what sort of being are you? What's your planet like?"

"Beastman. The planet used to be desert, now...I'd say it's much like this one."

Short, informational answers. Like entries from an encyclopedia. Like the Doctor had once given when he was not really the Doctor but a wonderful brave man named John Smith. But this was different--Viral did not want to share much of anything.

"Right," Martha bit her lip, trying to think of what to do next. This beastman was not trying to be rude, it was just how he responded. But there was something about him that begged to be spoken to.

"Um...anyone waiting for you back home?"

"No. I'm the last one."

Martha couldn't help it.

"On the planet? The last man on the whole planet?"

"No. Just of my species. Plenty of humans still around."

"Oh," Martha shut her mouth and stared at the ground. After a moment, Viral spoke up.

"I apologize if I seem rude. I do not normally talk about myself."

"That's fine--I'm sorry for asking. Curiousity sometimes gets the better of me," she replied, tucking a stray hair behind her ear, "and I forget when to stop talking. Would've thought time with the Doctor would have fixed that, but it only made it worse." She smiled softly. Viral nodded, a hint of a smile playing behind his eyes.

"He's a strange man"

"Yeah, he is. But he's a good man, despite what he thinks. A good man," Martha turned to look at Viral, "and you too, I think."

Viral was taken slightly aback. For years, he had only heard of what a "rotten bastard" or horrible monster or worse things he was coming from human lips. Not that he had taken any of the jibes to heart or judged all men on the basis of them (though a good majority of the reason he did not was because of Simon), but still.

"I do not understand."

"Um, well," and Martha looked away, timid now, "what I meant was that you seem like you're the kind to defend those you know to the end. That's...that's all."

Viral was still confused, but managed to mumble a swift thank you. That warm feeling again; why was it back? He stepped beyond the door to see where the others had gone, but whipped back around when he heard Martha scream. She was running for the door, which of course meant she ran smack dab into the Beastman. He kept his balance, but threw up his arms so as to not catch her on his claws. The beastman felt arms wrap around him (surely a reaction, as she seemed to trip and would reasonably be grabbing at anything that would hold her up), and he nearly blanched. That warm feeling grew as he felt her heart beat quicken against his chest.

Immediately she pulled away and neither of them would look at each other and it was wordlessly decided they would not speak of this again. A second after, the Doctor and Jack were back in front of the door, all concerned.

"What was that?" Jack was sputtering and out of breath. The Doctor did not look much better.

"There was a rat," Martha muttered, "in your office"

"Most secure place in Britain...but for the rats, eh?"

"Oh, shut up Doctor."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once again, another lift ride. Viral quickly put his perception filter back on and they were walking the streets of Cardiff, which Viral was thankful for. A good, bracing air. Jack asked the Doctor what he knew about Viral and his world, and the Doctor relayed a story he'd already told Viral---some parts on the TARDIS were getting a little worn and he was searching for something to jerry-rig them into continuing to work when he'd arrived on what he called "new earth", when he'd shown up in the middle of a library. He swiftly warped elsewhere on the planet to a few years later and began searching again. He'd run into Viral after running into the law one too many times.

When the Doctor mentioned Leeron, Jack's face lit up.

"LEERON? As in, fantastic mechanic who can fix..pretty much anything?"

Viral's eyes went wide.

"You know him?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes," Jack grinned. The Doctor and Viral winced, disturbed enough by that mental image.

There was food, and more talking, but Viral still felt on the outside, probably because the other three were such chatterboxes. Martha would occasionally look over and let Viral know she was sorry for earlier, and he would acknowledge her apology and return a glance that told her to stop apologizing. At the end of it, they were back in the alleyway where they had left the TARDIS.

"Well, it's been lovely, but...pitstop and all. Best be on our way. Goodbye Martha, goodbye Jack"

Jack chuckled, embracing the Doctor.

"Never in one place for too long. See you, Doctor. And Viral?"

The beastman only shook his head, sighing in disgust when Jack sent him a wink. Martha embraced the Doctor as well, squeezing him tight around the middle.

"Bye, Doctor."

"Bye Martha"

And now Martha stood in front of Viral and not for the first time that day both the time agent and the time lord noticed something quite amusing. Martha hesitated for a moment before giving Viral a hug. The beastman, for the first time, looked completely flustered. He placed a hand loosely on Martha's back, removing it when she withdrew. She then stood on tiptoe to give the beastman a quick peck on the cheek, apparently too quickly for his old solider reflexes to react. The Doctor subdued a laugh and stepped back into the TARDIS, followed by the silent beastman.

"I think she likes you," the Doctor chimed when the doors had closed and the TARDIS was moving. Viral glared for a moment.

"Shut up."

"What? All I was saying was..."

"Just...don't talk, please."

The Doctor nodded, remembering (why was he always forgetting?) that Viral, too, was alone, had probably been alone far longer than he himself had. And a soldier for as many years, with the need for emotions drilled out of him until the realization for them not blooming until probably years afterwards, and by then it was far too late. And now..well, the Doctor knew from experience that those sort of things were very complicated. It was easier to not think about them, no matter how often they manifested themselves.

They continued on to their next destination in relative quiet, save for a few words here and there.

"Martha is very kind"

"Yes. She used to fancy me, you know," the Doctor responded, a little proud. Viral only shrugged.

"Must have been poor taste on her account."

The Doctor stared for a moment, then laughed.

"Are we getting a sense of humor there, big kitty?"

Viral smirked.

"Perhaps"


	9. Ohana

_I should stop waiting so long between updating, but life is life, y'know. Decided on a fun little crossover to make up for the fact that Disney now has a Stitch! anime that pretty much reimagines the series and takes all the good stuff away--Lilo, Hawaii, Elvis...etc. It's horrible, don't watch it. But this, this, you should read, because it's cute. Also, I may have them swing past here again. Also after this we are returning to Ostia to begin our little way to the end of the story. I don't believe in going much beyond 10 chapters, becaus stories tend to lose my attention after that long, but this may go to about 15/20.  
_

_Summary: The Doctor and Viral hit up Kauaii around 2007, running into some very strange folks._

_

* * *

_ Despite himself, Viral yawned.

In his defense, he found it rather hard not to. The air was warm, the sun was bright, and all his feline instincts urged him to stretch out and sleep. After all, he hadn't the past few days, running from place to place narrowly escaping death with a stranger known only as the Doctor. The strange thing was, he was getting used to it now, the traveling. He'd always traveled, but this...excitement, this constant sense of danger had him feeling quite young again, and perhaps, not so hopeless.

Viral smothered the yawn with a pass of his paw over his head, to smooth out his hair. Beneath the perception filter, his claws emerged to comb his hair a little straighter. He made a mental curse towards the lazier side of his feline genetics and looked back.

The Doctor had, when they had arrived at this place, poked his head out, grinned, and made back inside to change into something "cooler". Viral had only shrugged, and shed his jacket, tossing it in the Doctor's wake. This place was warm, what need did he have for a thick jacket?

The Doctor emerged in a very bright floral shirt, thin legs poking out the bottom of wide shorts. Viral took one look and began to laugh. Not mere amused laughter but hysterical guffaws that made it quite clear that the Doctor was better off in suits. The Time Lord's shoulders sank, and he was quickly back in his suit. When the time Lord reemerged, Viral was still chuckling.

"Oh come off it, it wasn't that funny," he mumbled, arms crossed. Viral shook his head.

"I don't think I've seen someone that pale since...Leeron," the beastman responded with a shudder. Now that, that was an unpleasant memory, Leeron insisting on a 'party' for those who had so long ago saved the universe, and suggesting they hold it on a beach. It had taken so long to rid himself of that image, and there it was back again. The Doctor nodded knowingly, and they began to walk.

"So, where is here, exactly?"

"Hawaii. The island of Kauaii, actually, on the planet earth in 2007. I figured we'd need to relax, so I brought us here. Peaceful, quiet little island where we're not going to run into anything too terrible."

"Every time you say that, we almost die. You are aware of this?"

"Aw, come on! It's Hawaii! Lighten up! Or, I suppose, go get some sleep, Mr. Big Ol' Sleepy Kitty...," the Doctor's smile was beginning to get on Viral's nerves again. He wondered if the man could recover from a swift kick to the stomach. The beastman decided a better course of action would be to just glare, and so he did.

For what it was worth, the Doctor was right. Kauaii was a nice little island, if it did feel a little tourist-y. (That, of course, Viral had encountered long before. Kamina City was a place for lives to be reborn, and some enterprising folks had started tours out to the "old settlements" underground. Viral had been living with those who had chosen to stay underground, since city life was too confining for him, and the tourists had stared. Not at first, when there were Beastmen among the customers, who tittered away in their seats, perhaps ashamed at the beastman among the 'backwards' humans. But slowly, there were less and less, and then no more Beastmen. Viral had heard there was a scramble in Kamina City for medicine to extend the short lives of the beastmen, but it had come around too late. Whispers and stares he knew.)

The two men walked along, old soldiers for once at peace with the past. The ocean was crashing, the wind was gentle. For the first time in a truly long while, they sat down and had a meal with no interruptions-- noone trying to kill them, no one chasing them out, nothing. Though when the Doctor had ordered for Viral (who only stared at the menu and STILL did not want to eat, really), there had been some confusion.

"What is it?" Viral glared at the offending processed meat in front of him, prodding it with his fork.

"Spam"

"I know that. What is it?"

"Just try it, it's good!"

"What's in it?"

"Um...."

"I am not eating it."

Viral was beginning to see that traveling with the Doctor was more than just constant danger. The man was a charming host and a good guide through the worlds he had taken the beastman through. Perhaps those who traveled with him before did not want to leave. Viral began to wonder when his time, too, would come to an end, and the Doctor would once again be left on his own. Perhaps it was best not to know, and not to plan. Plans seemed quite ineffectual with the Time Lord anyway.

Of course, the trip was not wholly uneventful. Viral discovered this as he sat on a bench parked neatly in the sand as the Doctor had walked elsewhere, keen on following the plant life, which, for some reason, was fascinating to him. He had said something about bananas, and just sort of wandered. As the beastman sat, he noticed a small, furry, blue creature. Clearly, not from this planet. But he shrugged it off, keen not to remove his perception filter. One alien does not make an exception for all.

And then this blue creature noticed him, and was up next to him on the bench, sniffing away. A young woman, obviously native to the island, followed behind, chiding the creature. A six year old followed behind, berating the young woman.

"STITCH! Come on, leave him alone!"

"NANI HE'S SNIFFING!"

"So? He was sniffing before and destroyed the bench in the living room!"

The creature, Stitch, continued to sniff at the beastman, who greeted the action with a bemused expression. This was odd, but not threatening.

Then, (of course, Viral's mind muttered, of course) Stitch began to growl. It was a low, deep sound that a creature of that size should not have been able to manage. Viral only shook his head, unphased. The growl grew louder.

"Stitch, leave him alone! Sorry sir," the woman sputtered as she caught up, "he's usually nicer. STITCH, STOP IT"

"Nani's right. I'm sorry Mister."

"It's alright," he replied curtly. The animal still did not budge. The little girl reached up and tried to pull the creature off the bench.

"Stitch!"

"NA!" it barked back. It rattled off something in a language Viral had once grasped a long time ago. The girl did not understand it, but Viral caught a few words. He looked at the creature--Turian? No. That didn't make any sense.

Then again, neither did the beastman.

"No, come on."

Stitch grumbled a few more things under his breath, hopped off the bench, and followed the girl and the young woman away. Viral's eyes followed them until they dissapeared.

"So, anything happen?"

Viral was quiet for a moment.

"Have you ever heard Turian?"

The Doctor cocked his head.

"Singer or language?"

Viral only glared. The Doctor put up his hands in a gesture of defeat.

"Kidding, kidding. Yes, I have. Why?"

"...because there was a 'dog' that just growled at me in Turian. "

"Dog?"

"Blue."

"...Ah well."

The beastman raised an eyebrow.

"Clearly, he's allowed here. Did anyone else seem suspicious of it?"

"No."

"Hm. I think I might have..well, we'll check on it when we return to the TARDIS."

"Yes, we."

The Doctor looked at Viral and smiled sadly.

"If you want to stay here..."

"I don't. However..."

"Let me know when you want off. Everyone's different," the time lord replied, "and I am certainly no judge".

Upon returning to the TARDIS, the Doctor had discovered that this little 'dog', Stitch, was in fact a geneticly engineered superweapon that had been exiled to Earth to live with a local family. It carried no details of why or how, but the Doctor found this sufficent and wanted to leave the matter alone. Viral, for once, pushed.

"They think I'm a threat, or at least 'Stitch' does"

The Doctor chuckled.

"Probably because you're another foreign creature to this land. He's protecting his family, I'd warrant. He doesn't know what you're here to do, and it looks like he's been chased after before," the Doctor tapped a screen, and there in the notes Viral saw that the creature had once been detained in a high-security prison ship, and plans had been to either exile or destroy him.

Which was not wholly unlike what he had seen happen to the less "human" beastmen, some of which had served under him so long ago. He had turned away when he had seen Rossiu's troops come for those beastmen who refused or were unfit for city life. They had said soon, the whole world would have been cities. Viral had felt for his fallen comrades, but moved on.

"Hn."

Viral decided to take a stroll through the cool night air. He took off his shoes, allowing his feet to sink into the sand as he walked. Protecting.

Family.

There was a word Viral did not like. The Doctor may have known about Memusu (who existed yet did not), but the Doctor knew nothing of how the beastman longed for a family. How when he saw the children frolicking he ached for the arms of his own child around him. When he had lived underground, he'd been "big brother". Often, Viral would bring a village's children back to the 'doctors' when they had strayed too far from home.

Like him now. Like Simon then. Countless times he'd sheathed his claws and hefted a child onto his shoulder, or cradled them in his arms, until he could get them to better care. The women would always smile at him, a nervous smile on some and a trusting smile on others. Eventually, though, they had gone too. He did not go underground any more--those who knew him there had long since moved away.

Eventually Viral had wandered off of the beach and found himself in a dense patch of trees. Of course, he was aware of where he was (and was careful not to tread upon someone's property--time with the Doctor had only reinforced this sentiment). Still, his nose told him he was not far from the TARDIS. The TARDIS itself was a clear note above the sand and ocean and wet dirt beneath his feet. It was old. There was no other description for it. It was a familiar smell, like earth, but so far beyond it.

The beastman sat, shaking his shoulders out. The filter jangled on his wrist, glaring up at him like a one-eyed temptor. He glared back in kind and took a deep gulp of island air. He welcomed the comfort of a sort of noisy silence.

A little blue blur tumbled out of the foliage, quickly unfurling itself and glancing about. Ah.

This one again. Stitch caught wind of Viral, who was quickly back on his feet, but assumed, much to his chagrin, a position of neutrality. (Immortal though he was, healing was a son of a bitch if something insisted on tearing you to bits). The blue creature stared at him, head cocked. Viral spoke a word or two of a Turian greeting, and the creature urged him out of the way. It rummaged in the bush behind Viral, pulling out a book with a worn cover.

Stitch guarded it like it was some sort of treasure. Perhaps it was, to him. The blue creature, still attempting to seem threatening, began to skitter up the hill. Viral tried again.

"Hello"

Stitch barely tossed an "eh" over his little shoulder.

"I know you're not an earth dog," Viral hacked out in Turian. It had been ages, really, since he had even the remotest need to speak it. Back before even Stitch's creator had begun to forumlate intricate lunatic plans. The animal turned around to correct the pronunciation (really, if someone was going to speak your language, he should do it right) before it caught on.

"Relax," Viral snapped as Stitch tensed and bared his teeth. Additional arms folded out into the open; a ridge of spines crested the creature's head. If Viral had not known the danger behind the creature, he would have been hardpressed to find it threatening. It was...very much like the small animals the Doctor had shown him on a spin through Aus....Aust..Australia. That was the place. He called the creatures a Koala.

This "Stitch" was a mutant koala.

"I'm just passing through," Viral uttered.

More curses. Several levels above any he'd heard before. Viral only glared, grateful the small girl did not understand most of the things her pet spoke.

In one quick move, Viral knelt and detatched the filter from his wrist. Human features flickered away, and the beastman was standing (well, kneeling) unhidden. Stitch's eyes went wide, and the creature demanded answers. In Turian.

Viral did not tell him much, beyond being a traveler. Stitch would not have known, being confined since birth, that outside of that federation existed so many other places beyond their rules. Stitch huffed at mention of the federation, and with good reason. Viral withheld even basic facts about himself with ease. This too, he had learned from the Doctor. Where the Doctor had been eager to spout off anything to gain an alliance (really, if Viral heard "Last of the Timelords" again...), Viral wished only to show he was not a threat to this creature. He could not say why, but starting a fight out of the blue was not the beastman's style.

Stitch pointed up the hill, explaining that was where he lived. Viral cocked an eyebrow, unsure of what the creature was asking. Stitch glared and explained in Turian that he lived up this hill. Did Viral want something?

"I do not understand," he answered in Turian, but Stitch replied in "english", voice garbled by his small pharynx. Really, if he wanted to be imposing, the scientist should have made the creature bigger.

"Is..Ohana spirit. You is..family when you visit."

Viral withstood the urge to wince at the word, as he had so many times before.

"Ah, no. I am quite well," Viral fought the urge to sputter. This was the worst weapon ever created?

And as Stitch bade him goodbye and dissappeared into the night, Viral was struck by something.

He, too, was created purely as a weapon. There was no care given to how he may have wanted to live--he was a solider, pure and simple. He would never be a general. He would serve under whosoever Genome needed him to until the day came when he burned out and was not useful anymore. No one expected him to be chosen by Genome, or to ally with those who he had once pursued. Those among his former enemies still believed him only a weapon. People in Kamina City did much the same. They did not hide how they were unsettled by his presence. Of course, no one told them he could not die.

That they figured out when scared citizenry had accidently come upon him, and assumed he was going to attack. Nothing wounded him too seriously, but all the same.

And this creature, happy and healthy with a family. Perhaps (and maybe it fit) not a typical family--he had a feeling the young woman and her young sister had long been without parents, if the woman's tone was anything to go by. But a good family, none the less.

Viral slapped the filter back on his wrist and began his trek back to the TARDIS. Over the sweet musk of controlled fire, he found his way back.

"Ohana, huh?"

The TARDIS was back spinning through time and space, and Viral was quietly curled in the corner. The Doctor looked back at him, dashing to make sure they did not put a dent in anything on their way.

"What?"

"...nothing"

And because he was smart, the Doctor did not press. He knew of Ohana. Very well. Family.

He used to have family. Such a short time back and yet...beyond reach. And still so very painful to think of the loss. That day...had been one of the most painful in his long long life. Surviving the Time War seemed easy (and he really should have figured the Master was nowhere nearby, and why would he have returned to Galifrey anyway?) compared to the sharp pain that snapped within his chest as he watched them all walk away.

And then Rose. Beautiful sweet Rose, and that 'clone' who was him but not him. Said what he could not. Did what he could not. Two hearts were beating, one steadily breaking.

Then the Tardis urged them to leave, and he saw that clone go where he could not, and one heart was broken. Tears welled behind his eyes. But not here.

Wonderful, important Donna.

The second heart broke, really, when her grandfather had sworn he would remember what Donna could not. And then he was alone. For a long time. He had seen Earth in a disturbingly close future that, thankfully, seemed less and less apt to happen on this time line. He had watched a little hunk of steel and circuts guard its love from the storms. And slowly, the hearts had mended.

But everyone knows once broken, things are never quite the same when they're put back together.


	10. Summer Skin Part I

_So, in an effort to STOP myself from ruminating on Viral and the Doctor's BAWW inducing issues and being all depressing, I bring you a one shot to indulge my sappy yet bitter romantic side. Viral's obviously not one for physical closeness or terribly interested in love (by and large because, I think, it seems rather pointless to put himself and someone else through that when he can't have what he wants most--a family), so I had fun bringing in his dream wife._

_NOTE ON THE NAMES: I am going by the fan name I have seen for dream wife, which is Tsuma. I just want to let you guys know before you read further so you're not staring at the page like "who the hell's that chick?" XD_

_TWO PARTER! Second part coming soon--though probably after the 14th, as I've got a big test to study for and am trying to not do other things besides study.  
_

_  
Title: Summer Skin (part I) [yes, because of the song. Shut up, I like it]  
_

_Summary: Returning to Ostia, Viral discovers why they had been chased out in the first place._

* * *

Once again, the travelers found themselves in the warm Roman sun at Ostia. A cool breeze blew in from the sea, refreshing the air. The citizenry buzzed about the square, leaving the TARDIS unnoticed.

Well, at least Viral thought so. The Doctor quickly scribbled a note and tacked it to the door, mumbling something about people selling what wasn't theirs. Viral had not once asked why he could easily understand the Doctor or why he saw the same language everywhere they went. While he had been part of the exploration team, they had used a similar device, but interpreters were always heavily relied on. The Doctor, curious as to why Viral **wasn't** asking, had blathered on something about a psychic field, and Viral hadn't continued the conversation. He rarely did, as there was not much to speak about. The beastman considered the man an acquaintance, but Viral did not make friends, nor comrades. Not anymore.

Viral looked around, noticing the familiar locale.

"...we have been here before, Doctor."

"Have we? Hm.."

"We were chased back to the TARDIS"

"Which time?"

Viral closed his eyes and sighed. Sadly, the Doctor was not joking.

"This would be when I was threatened when I had never been here before."

The Doctor's face lit up.

"Ah, but see, you have. Now"

"I went for the second time before I went for the first?"

"Yes. Isn't that fantastic?"

"...no"

The city seemed alive with energy. No festival this time, just a general feeling of city life. Viral recalled when Kamina City (and others like it) had begun like this; closeness and opportunity. It rapidly, in an almost grotesque parody of what Viral had heard whispers of what had happened to his creator, Lord Genome, evolved and grew and soon they were all distance and shifted blame.

The two travelers strolled along, Viral noticing something in the air. It almost smelled like fear, like fear and dust. The Doctor was prattling on about some sort of history (every time they had ended up on Earth, Viral was given a brief, albeit a little confusing, history, as much as the Doctor could remember. He had learned about the history of the United States in about twenty minutes, and still had not understood much of the reasoning behind bigger issues the country had had. He had begrudgingly sat through a rather long explanation about European History (of which the briefest was nearly two hours), which Viral had quickly put a stop to.

"I will ask when we arrive there," he'd growled, and the Doctor had hushed.

To the Doctor's puzzlement, Viral had quickly learned to adapt a very neutral way of acting wherever they had gone, instead waiting until he had absorbed enough of his environment to make a solid decision on how to act. The Time Lord supposed this had come from years of living as a soldier. Attack planning was a trying and evershifting thing. The Doctor let a small grin escape as he watched Viral stretch in the sunlight, remarkably graceful despite the rough exterior. A real marvel of nature, even if the Time Lord could not shake that feeling that Viral was--much like Jack--wholly, inescapably wrong. And yet, there was this feeling that perhaps for Viral, there was a way for it all to end.

Of course, billions of years down the line, there could have been a way for it to end for Jack, too, but the Doctor didn't want to dwell on that. Even when you lived for century upon century, mortality still was not an easy thing to confront (even if you did almost every time you stepped out of your 'home'). After all, one day he too, would die one last time and there would be no inner-glow, no change of face. Just, hopefully, peace.

The Doctor took a deep breath and released it just as fast. Nice warm day, adventure ahead. Best not to dwell on sadder things.

They walked, air alive with a strange sort of energy. The Doctor shoved his hands in his pockets and grinned.

"Ah, Rome at the height of its power. Never quite another empire like this. By the looks of this crowd, I'd say it was...Market day."

As if to prove the Doctor right, a vendor loudly hocked his wares, and the energy pulsed in a momentary lull in the noise. The travelers continued their stroll, both wondering if this time, like so many others, something would pull them from a moment of peace to save someone or stop something horrible. Viral sniffed the air, noticing the scent of fear growing much stronger. Wordlessly, he pressed forward a little quicker, and the Doctor followed. It was odd how easily they worked as a team.

The scent of fear was coming from the docks, where men gathered around a small pedestal, listening intently as a skilled auctioneer brought up slave after slave and sold them to the highest bidder. The travelers watched from a distance, each biting back anger. The Doctor spoke, once, after a deep, tense breath, "unfortunately, an empire built on the work of slaves. All the hardwork, none of the rights."

Viral looked on in silence as a child, thin and still rattled from the trauma that had torn him from his home was brought before the crowd. The child could not have been more than eight years old. Beneath his perception filter, his claws dug into his palm, threatening to break skin. As it became evident that none, at least not at this port, would buy the child, the auctioneer pulled the child from the platform and threw him back to another handler. Viral felt a hand on his shoulder. The Doctor.

"They do know better. It's just so ingrained, this sense that one life is worth less than another, they won't change. Not for a long while."

A new face on the platform, but Viral's attentions were on the crowd, on a face he knew so very well. Viral's eyes narrowed--it couldn't be. She was...not real, just a figment of his mind. A trick his mind had played when an enemy too great had gotten in, and shown him what he truly wanted. But she was there, draped in dusty linens, with her head bound up as if she'd been injured. His palm now bled, deep little half circles pooling red and staining the rough curve of his nails. The beastman began to step away, but the Doctor did not allow him. Viral pulled his shoulder away, for once good and properly angry at the Doctor.

But the Time Lord simply looked at him and the beastman halted, if just for a second. It was enough for the Doctor to get a word in.

"You can't."

The Doctor did not know of the situation beyond their previous encounter, but that was apparently enough. Somehow the Doctor knew how angry this made the beastman. He pointed beyond the auctioneer, to a man they had both seen before. Viral watched, trying to quell his anger (though he could not recall a reason for it, other than this young woman's familiar face, and what sort of excuse was that?), as the man from before bid the highest on this new slave. Viral noticed (or perhaps imagined) a sinister, leering note in the man's eyes.

"Well," the Doctor spoke, "time to go make a new friend. Shall we?"

Viral turned to see the grin across the Doctor's face. For once, he returned it.

"Of course"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

It really was quite a nice home. A little too overdecorated but that came with the Roman ideal, didn't it? The Doctor effortlessly had gotten them into the nobleman's home, claiming to be a visiting dignitary from Briton (with Viral as his bodyguard on the road--for once playing into the scrawniness of his tenth body).

The Doctor had taken to chatting up the nobleman's staff, while Viral stuck close, looking around to see if he could catch another glimpse of that face, to just be sure he was not seeing what he thought he was. When asked, Viral answered in short, curt sentences, which kept most of the 'staff' at bay. When they finally gained an audience, the nobleman was all to eager to chat away with the Doctor over the situation in Briton.

The man, however, was not eager to do so with Viral standing there, quiet and seething deep inside. He sent away several of his staff, and asked that the Doctor send away Viral. The Doctor nodded to Viral, his eyes trying to tell the beastman what he could not say.

That for all intents and purposes, here, the society didn't see them as equals. Viral was far too quiet to pass for nobility. The beastman nodded, and left, standing just outside the door.

And suddenly, she was there, warm eyes bright. She smiled up at Viral, a tray laden with various foods in her small hands. She ducked into the room, and returned just as quickly after a loud outburst from her master. Viral could not help but wince, but she looked none the worse as she re-emerged.

"It's alright, I'm used to it."

Viral only shrugged. The girl gasped.

"Oh, where are my manners? I'm Tsuuma."

"Viral," he answered, trying not to be affected. The same face. The same voice. The same name. Could the universe be this cruel?

"Is that man in there your master?"

Viral fought the urge to yell. Instead, he nodded.

"Yes. He...found me in Briton, needed a guard"

Sentences still short, he fought to spit out more words.

"Such a spirited man, he is," she replied. Her voice was soft, Viral noticed.

"Yes, he is."

Suddenly, the Doctor's voice.

"Viral, could you come here a moment?"

Silently, swiftly, he was at the Doctor's side. Quietly, the Doctor spoke to him.

"We...might be here a while."

"Why?"

"Well...this nobleman's family gained wealth over something decidedly un-Roman."

"...how do you know that after an hour of conversation?"

"...it's all around that great room. Remnants of technology that won't exist for thousands of years"

"Ah. Then we are...."

"Going to destroy it. The world will already be capable enough to 'protect' themselves without this information."

"Hn."

The Doctor spoke loud once more.

"Our gracious host has invited us to stay tonight at his home. I thank you again, sir."

Viral nodded deeply--his pride never allowing him to bow.

"Slave quarters are close by---TSUUMA!"

And she was back in the same room with him, frail and yet strong.

"Yes, master?"

"Show Viral to the slave quarters. He'll need a place to sleep tonight."

Viral fought the urge to speak, knowing it would, how had the Doctor put it, "blow their cover"?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
Viral had told Tsuuma that he was not hungry, but she had insisted they stop at the kitchens anyway. She handed him a piece of bread, warm from the oven, as she took hers. A little bit of milk and a stolen nip of honey and they were sitting in the warmth of the setting sun. He could not help but be uplifted by her presence,though every portion of his brain was screaming that the same voice or the same face didn't mean this was the same woman.

But as they sat in silence, he thought it was fairly nice. He tried to make his sentences longer, his voice softer, kinder, vainly striving to keep his heart from affecting his head.

This girl was everything he recalled from the dream life--small, fragile, but so unbelievable strong. But she was a stranger.

Then her warm eyes looked up into his and she spoke again.

"Don't I know you?"


	11. Summer Skin Part II

Disclaimer: If I owned either of these franchises, oh how happy I'd be. But I don't, so enjoy!

Barely any Doctor in this chapter at all, surprisingly. I wonder where it all went! I tried to write this as a cross between how little 'crushes' happen during Dr. Who episodes, and how I think Viral might react to seeing his dreamwife in another world. Makes you wonder--if they're every way the same, are they the same person you know? It certainly wasn't true for Jackie or Mickey in "Pete's World", but is it true for Tsuma (dreamwife)?

Romance in the Whoverse is very tricky. Things never last very long.

Also--this will be a three-parter. There's too much that is going on after this final point to be included in this chapter.

Summer Skin: Part II_  
_

* * *

Viral tore another piece from his loaf of bread, tried not to let anything tell in his voice.

"I've never been to Ostia before," he replied, a fact. Her eyes fell a little.

"Oh," she spoke, "I was born in Briton, but was sold here very young."

Viral nodded, sublimating every thought of that long-ago dream that spun its way through his head. This was not the woman whom his fake-life had told him had bandaged his wounds and held him oh so very close. This was not the woman who, after a tender, dizzying night was with child--_his _child. This was not the same person at all. Her head was probably bandaged from a wound she'd received while running about the house.

But she was such a close approximation, it almost made his head spin. He bit back the familiarity in his voice.

"How old are you now?"

She rubbed the back of her neck with a slender hand, and he was aware of the callouses across her palm. He wants to grab her hands and hold them tight. To take off the filter and show her truth of his form, but he knows this is ridiculous. She would run screaming, which would compromise their position and he didn't wish to be run out of town. Again.

"Twenty," she answered, "or so. I never have found out precisely when I was born, so I guess."

Again, that soft smile. Viral is quite sure that if he bites back any harder, he will cleave the tip from his tongue. Of course, it will grow back, but that would leave the question of disposing of the renegade flesh. He breathed out (gills fluttering beneath the filter).

"What about you, Viral?"

"What about me?"

"How old are you?"

The beastman recalled that he should lie, even if to him, it felt ridiculous. The Doctor was 905, allegedly. This was a ridiculous number, but it was not beyond Viral's belief. Viral, though, was maybe 80. He did not look it. He looked the same as he had that day so very long ago when Lord Genome had ushered him into a chamber and sealed his fate. Viral had never expect anyone to believe him, so he had never bothered to try to 'lie'.

Defying his own logic, he lied.

"Twenty-six," he replied, quietly, more interested in his drink than conversation. A moment or two in silence (Viral stares at his clothing, wondering if the Doctor knew they would be in this sort of predicament, and that was why the beastman was wearing something a little plainer, a little shabbier than he was used to), and Tsuma was on her feet. Viral soon followed, concerned. She only shook her head.

"I've got to show you to the quarters, don't I? My mind's been gone, lately," she patted the bandages, wincing at the pressure. Viral faintly smelled infection, and forced himself to ask what was not his business.

"Are you alright?"

"It's just a minor wound. Nothing terrible. Promise. Now come on," she replied.

They walked back through the building and out, down a different path. Even in the dim light, he could make out a new red stain on her light hair. He watched every step for her to swoon because of the loss, but she remained steady. He chided himself for not thinking straight. This was a grown woman before him.

They reached the slave quarters quite quickly, and Viral was shown his room. The beastman gave it a cursory glance, knowing he would spend much of the night elsewhere, but thanked the other slave and set out to find Tsuma again. His mind also reminded him that he was supposed to find the Doctor after he'd seen his quarters for the night.

Tsuma was sitting along the path, admiring the stars when he found her. He said nothing, trying to force himself to continue on, to find the Doctor so that they could take care of things and leave, like they always did. Quick, dirty, and usually painless.

But she looked up, and there were tears in her eyes, and any intent he had of passing her was gone.

Firm hands held her shoulders (he was to his knees almost instantly), golden eyes looked into hers. She was in pain. Without a second thought, his training kicked in. He had long had to bandage his own wounds, but when he had had troops beneath him, they were by and large without much medical help (after all, they were disposable). More than once he had helped a comrade off the field and tended a wound so that they might return to fighting the humans to the last.

He has one arm around her back and another under her knees, and he is running to fresh water (in this case, the kitchens and the well). When they arrive (Tsuma notices that it is quite quick--much faster than seems normal). When they arrive, he finds one strip of the linen in the dark and tears it in half, unwinding the bandage and casting it aside. He looks at the wound, which seems much more severe than it is in the strange glow of the houselights. A deep gouge, running across her scalp. It oozes new blood, and he is irrigating it with water he's drawn up from the well.

She winces as he washes out the wound, more for the cold sensation than the pain. Before she knows it, she's all bandaged up again (his shirt is a wreck, though), and the pain, though still there, has receeded. She stares up in him in wonder, still stunned at the speed of his help.

"Who...are you?"

His heart was pounding in his chest, noticing she was mere inches from him (He had drawn her up onto his knee so he could bandage her head properly), and promptly scooted back.

"Just a bodyguard," he replied.

"But how did you..."

"I was a ...," he paused to breathe, a bit scared at how quickly his emotions had spurred him to react, "warrior, once. When my men were hurt...we rarely had help with tending our wounds. So I learned to do it."

More little half-truths spilling from his lips. Time with the Doctor was making him remarkably good at that.

"Oh," she whispered, "thank you."

"You're welcome."

An uncomfortable silence (Viral had long grown used to them), before Tsuma pointed at the moon. It was full and round, gleaming down benevolently. Before he knew it, a small, warm hand found his. Looking down in confusion, he saw her wrapping both small hands around his one rather large one, and felt a great swell of emotion in his chest. He breathed (in through the nose, out through the gills, now then, calm) to quell it.

"I came to Rome, first," she spoke. Viral looked around, to see if she was talking to anyone else. No one.

Viral was quite unused to being talked to. Talked _at_, talked _about_, of course. (He was, after all, one of the last surviving members of the Dai Gurren Brigade, and the final beastman. The people saw him as a discarded remnant of how they used to live. If he had stayed, he was sure to have become some urban legend, along with the rest of the Brigade).

But talked to? Very rarely, if ever. Until recently. Until the Doctor.

"They brought us in a caravan, across all of the territories, until we ended up in Rome."

Thousands and thousands of miles away, he recalled.

"My master," she stopped her, a hand to her head. At Viral's look of concern, she merely waved a hand dismissively.

"My_ first_ master was my current master's brother. When my first master passed a few years ago, I ended up here."

Viral only nodded, too aware of the contact.

"How is home?"

Viral looked puzzled.

"Home? Briton?"

Viral struggled to recall something, anything, about England at that point. He settled for a descriptor.

"Rainy," he replied with such blunt honesty that Tsuma began to laugh. Viral looked away, concerned he'd said something wrong. A small hand on his shoulder drew his eyes back, and he dropped his hand from hers.

"Well of course rainy! But what else?"

The truth was ready to spurt from his mouth, and he held it back.

"I must confess, I have not been home in quite a while. Years."

"How long have you been traveling with your master?"

How long indeed? Viral had lost count of the time--surely it could not have been long, and yet it felt like ages.

"A very long time."

"Is he kind?"

Images cascaded through Viral's vision--he'd seen the Doctor kind, but so very often he'd seen him dark and fathomless and beyond comprehension in his anger. But he never would raise his voice. It was that otherworldly, bottomless wrath that terrified you down to the bone.

He'd also seen the man weep over lost loves and friends, and a family gone long long ago.

But was he kind?

"Yes."

She notices, in the light, scars running across his stomach (he had torn new bandages for her from his shirt), and she gives him a questioning look before remembering he was a fighter.

"You act like you know me," she whispers, but he can hear. He steps away from her comfortable warmth.

"You're...familiar. A face I think I've seen before," he replies, taking a seat on the stone wall. He lets his elbows rest on his thighs.

"So why did you tell me that..."

"I did not," he quipped, and it was truth. He had never said he did not know her. The explanation was simply so far fetched, it was better to keep the truth hidden.

"Then, what did this face mean to you, before?" she cries, and his heart falls as he sees her eyes. She is searching, confused. Like she had something to get back to but forgot what it was. He cannot bring himself to respond.

"You came here, and I know I knew you. I fell," she points to her head, "and forgot so much--I wouldn't even know where I was from if not for Miss Romana. Please, just...tell me. What did this face mean before?"

Viral sighed. He could not, would not tell her.

"I'm familar?" he replied, trying to see where his boundaries were.

"Yes," she drew a breath, "but rougher...different. But it's..it's still you. Still that face."

No. He wouldn't reveal himself. That was too much for her, especially if he was going to up and leave her.

"I'm sorry, I don't know you."

If the beastman was more familiar with feelings, the ache in his chest would have been nothing new. But at the instant it hit him, he knew what it was. He watched her turn, anger in her eyes. Of its own accord, a hand reached out to hold hers. She looked back, seething. On the surface, she acted a pretty, innocent girl, all too eager to set about doing her tasks all day. But she couldn't recall anything from before. He had been her chance, and he had torn it away from under her.

"I'm sorry, Tsuma," he breathes. She tries to pry her hand free.

"Let me go!"

"If you were...if I did know you...," he shakes his head. This is stupid. She is not the same person.

But his heart is first and his logic circumvented.

"If I did know you, I think that...," he can't finish. She stops struggling against his grip, and looks back. He is trying to say something in a way that he's not really saying anything at all.

"Maybe, we were a family," he wants to say. Instead, "you were a lovely girl" comes out.

She stares at him, and sees that he does know her. He is just afraid to tell her how. They catch eyes for a moment, unable to move. Her eyes threaten to spill more tears. He moves his other hand to wipe them away, and suddenly they are too too close, and he regrets speaking.

Then one strange confusing lovely moment of breathless silence, he cannot resist catching her lips with his, letting return ages and ages of feelings long thrown aside, letting someone closer to him than ever. He will regret it later, of course, and not speak of it, but for now, he doesn't care. The woman of his dreams is in his arms for one beautifully fleeting moment, he is actually happy.

---------------------------------------------------------------

He joins the Doctor a moment later. He does not speak, only helps the Doctor sneak to the Great Hall and dismantle the little boxes and frames that are obviously not Roman in the least. The Doctor gives him several glances, but says nothing for a long while.

"You alright?" he pipes as he points the sonic screwdriver at another little square. It falls to bits quietly around the light. Viral tears out a crucial bit from another little square, and tosses it into the pile that the Doctor will get later, looks up, says nothing.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm alright. I'm fine," he mutters, tearing a little too eagerly into another square. It makes a noise, which he stifles with his hands before removing the offending piece.

He was not fine. The weeping girl back at the slave quarters was proof.

The Doctor ventured another go around at a conversation.

"Do you know the girl?" he is careful to put no accusation to the question, but it still lingers.

"No," Viral responds, "I thought I did."

Another pause. The Doctor wonders if he should try for the next question. He goes for it.

"Would she have been your wife?"

Viral felt the anger surge under his skin, more at himself than the Doctor. _Of course he would have figured it out. Of course he would have already known_.

Very quietly, full of anger and yet so much sadness, the response.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry"

"Don't be. I was foolish to think it was the same person."

She had held his hand, welcomed him so close to her. But he pulled away from the kiss and let her hands go.

"I am sorry," he tried to make it sound honest, "I must go."

"Viral!"

He reached back, brushing a strand of hair from her face.

"There is nothing at home anymore," he replied, "you're safe here"

And he had gone up the path, alone.

Another hour and they were finished, and Viral didn't dare to get any sleep. By morning, they would see the missing pieces in the Great Room (though they had tried to replace everything just right), and who would be suspected but the newest guests?

The Doctor insisted on canvassing the Great Room, just to make sure, before they headed to the TARDIS once more. As they did so, Tsuma peeked her head in from the opposite room, startling the Doctor but not Viral. Never Viral.

"What are you doing?"

"Well, you see...the...," the Doctor fumbled for an answer, his mind quickly sorting through lies he hadn't used yet on this particular person.

"We're leaving," Viral completed the sentence. Tsuma's eyes were wide. Viral did not look at her.

"Is this what you do?" she asked, bitter tone evident in her voice, "lie, get in, and steal?"

"Nonononononononononononono," the Doctor sputtered, "we didn't steal, it's just...,"

"We should go, Doctor."

But Tsuma would not let it go. She marched across the room, sandals crunching the odd little shard here and there. She laid her hands on Viral's arm, eyes imploring some sort of answer.

They always suspected the newest guests.

Or a slave too familiar and too eager to know something they should not.

A guard rounded the corner, a lantern in his hand.

"Oi, who's in there?"

The Doctor glanced back at Viral, who took Tsuma by the hand.

"RUN!"


	12. Summer Skin Part III

_Part III, and the conclusion of Summer Skin. I'm still in the process of finshing up planning for this little project of mine, but I forsee a few more chapters. I'm enjoying writing this a lot, though._

_The next chapter, I think, will be a crossover with one of my first sci-fi loves--Stargate SG1, when Richard Dean Anderson was playing Colonel O'Neill. It's not as silly as Dr. Who, but Anderson played a wonderful character and was HYSTERICAL. And he was Macguyver, people. MACGUYVER. I'm also working on drawing "Breakfast" to a close, and have some neat little ideas.  
_

_I also managed to pick up "The Doctor Trap" novel, because, let's face it, you can NEVER have enough of Donna and the Doctor. Just a few chapters in and already it is magnificent. It makes me wish that Douglas Adams had been around longer to amaze us with more Hitchhikers/write a Doctor Who/Hitchhiker's crossover. Since he worked on both. (The way this novel's written is very DA--silly and a bit ridiculous)  
_

_Summer Skin, Part III_

* * *

Viral had always been running, and so had the Doctor. Both were relative renegades, though the Doctor had a much longer list of charges against him than Viral ever would, starting with theft (the TARDIS) and leading on and on for ages.

But Tsuma had never had to. Her former master had been nothing but kind to her, and she and her fellow slaves knew a kindness most others did not know in Ostia. So to be running from this new master, pulled along by this familiar stranger with strong, wide hands, was something entirely new. She was not sure she liked it, and the questions tumbled out of her.

"Why are we running what did you do let me go!"

The Doctor's response did little to answer her questions, instead only fueling more as he began to go on about how her master had stolen these things and they were dangerous and they'd come to save the town and by the way he was the Doctor.

Viral flashed a sympathetic look at her when he noticed her confusion.

"He's like that, I'm sorry"

What strange men, she thought, and yet Viral's hand was so comfortable around hers, she kept running.

The trio rounded a corner and hunkered down, hoping that they'd lost any sort of following party. The Doctor peeked around the corner--they were out in the market square now. The heavy footsteps of guardsmen clunked past, and they lay silent. Viral's sharp eyes made out the TARDIS a few hundred yards away from them, and with as much stealth as they could muster (quite a lot, considering it was two rather tall men trying to stoop and move for a good stretch), aimed for the TARDIS.

When they reached it, Tsuma pulled away, demanding answers. Viral fought to forget the false memories that lingered, reminding him she was so much more than her pretty face. False memories that flashed oh so real through his vision, of her before him. He looked away, unwilling to speak.

"Who are you?"

Three simple words. Really, an easy question to answer.

"We're noone, really," the Doctor whispered, rubbing the back of his neck, "just travelers".

"You scammed your way to my master's house, destroyed his property and...," she cast a glance at Viral, who would not meet her eyes.

"Your master put the whole world in danger. I can't let that happen. "

"How?"

The Doctor didn't answer, only fumbled through his pockets for the key, stumbling back up the ramp. The time lord turned and poked his head back out the door. In the distance, Viral could hear Tsuma's master's voice, loud and angry.

"Come on Viral, we have to leave," he spoke, nodding his head at Tsuma. The time lord ducked out of sight. Tsuma glared angrily up at Viral, who had a hand on the door.

"Is this what you do?" she tried to keep herself contained, "just blow through like a storm, and leave a mess for others to clean up?"

He did not answer.

"Who are you?"

Viral met her eyes, years of abuse and self-isolation wearing him thing.

"I am no one, nothing. I'm a joke. I was wrong to ever have spoken to you."

"Really? Why?"

"Viral?" the Doctor poked his head out again, quickly retreating when a death glare was cast towards him.

"I would have gladly dealt with my own addled mind than pulled you into this mess."

"Viral. Time to leave."

Viral brought up a hand to stroke Tsuma's cheek.

"Goodbye."

A voice bellowed from across the square, and three sets of eyes looked up to find Tsuma's master bearing down on them, screaming explatives and holding a dagger.

"Oops, change of plans. Tsuma, along you go!"

Viral effortlessly lifted the protesting woman from her feet and joined the Doctor inside the TARDIS. He set her down as the doors closed and the engine whirred to life once more. Viral thought he detected a glad note to the engine's constant humming.

Tsuma swooned at the sight of such an odd room--surely this...this box had been smaller on the outside? And yet this was but one small room in a larger ship?

Viral's hands steadied her, preventing her from cracking her head open on the grated floor of the console room. The hum of the engine pitched a little lower, concerned over the girl. The Doctor looked at the core, wondering why the TARDIS had so rarely concerned itself with his companions.

======================================================================================  
Tsuma lay in a spare room (of which the TARDIS always had a surplus), resting.

"The shock of it, that's all. Happens to the best of us," the Doctor explained to the beastman, who took a seat by the door, trying to keep himself from far gone false memories.

"Do you want her to come with us?"

"No"

A short pause.

"I want her to go home."

When Tsuma awoke, Viral was there. The TARDIS refused to let the beastman far from Tsuma. She tried to speak. He urged her not to.

"Where are we?"

"Our mode of transport."

Tsuma's head began to swim. What a strange place.

"Almost there!" the Doctor cried from the Console Room. Viral nodded, and gestured to a change of clothing at the foot of Tsuma's bed.

"You'll need those," he muttered, leaving the room.

....................................................................................................

The TARDIS doors swung open to a bright, brisk day in slowly independent Briton. The three travelers exited, Tsuma feeling the chill of the air for the first time in her life. She pulled the warm garments closer to her, pleasantly surprised.

"Where are we?"

"Home," Viral replied. The Doctor expanded on the beastman's answer.

"Well, Roman Briton, officially. Weeelll, for a little while longer anyway. There's a village over there that's been quite welcoming to runaways before."

Tsuma looked back at Viral, then at the Doctor.

"How did---"

"Goes through time and space," the Time Lord added.

Not quite comprehending, she nodded. Something felt odd, she noticed, as the wind whipped through her hair.

The wound from earlier was gone. Could these two be more impossible? She smiled, despite her shakiness and confusion. Her small arms wrapped around Viral's waist.

"Thank you," she whispers in his ear, bringing her lips to brush his for a half-second more. He feels terrible for not telling her the whole truth, but it is for the best. He has false memories and true ones to counter them and perhaps one day it will not bother him.

"One last thing--," the Doctor sometimes spoke as if he didn't quite remember things all at once, "you'll need a different name--Tsuma's not quite Latin enough for the ol' boys. Something like Aethylwine, or Cwen or...oh, Cille is nice."

"It is," she smiled, looking at Viral.

"Will you stay?"

Both travelers are taken aback by her question. Viral weighs the decision, though he knows he will not stay.

"Do you want to?" the Doctor asked, and Viral can sense that he is preparing to be alone again. Memories of Tsuma in his false life flash before him--they way they met, the fights that would lead to knowing each other oh so very well. The smell of her skin on a balmy summer night when it was nothing but them and the stars to witness.

But he could never die. She eventually would, this woman who must have been that woman of his dreams in that false creation so very long ago. And that would not be fair to anyone.

"I cannot."

The free girl smiled, a note of sadness in her voice.

"It's a shame."

"Yes, it is," the beastman replies, knowing this has never been more true. She gestures for him to lean down, and holds his head her hands. She kisses him gently on the nose.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Tsuma cast a glance at the village, a soft smile on her face.

"If Miss Romana could see me now!" she chuckled. The Doctor perked at the mention of the name.

"Who?"

"Oh, she was, um, in charge of the slave quarters. When I lost my memory, she was by my side, helping me remember the important things".

The Doctor cast a look in the direction of far off Rome and smiled. He wished it truly could be her, but it could not be. The first woman to truly steal his heart(s) was somewhere in the ether, fufilling her promises.

And just like that they were gone. The men stood in the silence of the console room, and the hum of the engine pitched down, as if it was familiar with this situation. Viral took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. It hurt to let her go, to not tell her. As he exhaled, he let the feelings thrum though him. As he inhaled again, he buried them again, like he had so long ago, when they won but the memories of a sweltering summer night with that familiar girl swum in his memory and burned like fire.

Absently, he wondered why he'd bothered to come along in the first place with this strange man. Perhaps because he missed the unpredictability of the days when he'd chased the Gurren brigade across the terrain, adrenaline pumping through his veins at the thrill of the chase.


	13. Chapter 13

_Oh guys, I am SO SORRY for not updating this story for ages upon ages. I've been busy for about a year, and this story sort of stagnated with the specials, because honestly, none of this would follow actual canon--the Doctor had no traveling companions for the whole stretch of time for the specials. I try to write fairly close to canon, so it kind of threw a wrench in things._

_Still, story needs an end, which will be coming shortly. This is pretty much just a little teaser of what's to come.  
_

_Oh yes. I don't own Dr. Who or TTGL or any mentioned intellectual properties._

* * *

Strictly speaking, they're not having breakfast at the end of the world. The Doctor had already been there, and couldn't exactly cross back into his own time line. They're having breakfast at the end of the universe, at Milliways. The Doctor explains to the beastman how the restaurant is sort of outside of time, but not. About two sentences into the explanation, Viral shoots the man a look that makes it quite clear that he's really not interested in the intricacies of time travel.

They leave the TARDIS in the parking lot, and are greeted by a very morose looking robot. It lifts its large head and looks at the box before looking at its passengers.

"I suppose you'll want to be parking that thing," it sighs. Viral cocks his head in curiosity, rather like a cat. The voice is rather low and sounds quite depressed. The Doctor smiles and nods.

"Yeah," he answers, "but, ah, no valet. It's rather old and I'd like to..."

The robot sighs again, reaching for the ticket dispenser at what would be his beltline. He withdraws a card and hands it to the Doctor.

"Well, you can leave it here, I suppose. I wouldn't know."

"But you work here," Viral says, uncrossing his arms, "don't you?"

"Yeah," and Viral still does not understand how a robot can sigh, "but no one ever listens to me. Or tells me what I'm supposed to be doing. Not that they would if they knew. Anyhow, you still need to keep this card, so they know where to direct you."

The Doctor's face lights in recognition.

"Oh, yes, Marvin, hello!"

The eyes look up at the Doctor.

"Do I know you?"

"Err, yeah. Different face, though. Last time I saw you I had curly hair and a big deep voice and a scarf."

"Oh, it's you," Marvin sounds only a bit happier to see a familiar face. The Doctor and Viral wait a moment, as if expecting a response. When Marvin's silence is all that greets them, they press onward. The Doctor pats the top of Marvin's head as he passes.

"Good to see ya, Marvin"

The food is pretty decent at Milliways, and Viral is surprised to find quite a few things to his liking. They cook the meat to preference, so if Viral wants it raw, he can have it so. Of course, in polite company, he doesn't ask for this. The Doctor is not polite company, but Viral orders the meat somewhat rare any way. Across the restaurant from them are two Earthlings and a man with two heads, along with a man whose given 'English' name was rather like the name of the model of a car. They are not, however, of importance to this story, as they are having their own issues.

Or rather, Arthur Dent can not abide that his food wants to be eaten.

They don't talk too much, the Doctor and Viral, until the meal is done and they are waiting for the check. The more they had traveled, the more tired Viral had felt himself becoming. He couldn't figure out why, but it was certainly not anything he was going to bring up to the Doctor.

When they talk now, they don't really say much. There isn't much too say. So Viral says the obvious.

"Something's wrong."

"Now what would make you say that?" the Doctor's voice is quiet. He takes a sip of his drink, immediately wincing at the spirit's strength.

"Your demeanor. You're acting, like something is bothering you."

"No, not really."

"Yes."

The Doctor sighs.

"Come on, let's go. Places to go, people to see."

The TARDIS whirls and falls through time, until they are back in early 21st century London. They walk the streets of London, eventually coming to the Thames. A stiff, cool breeze blows over the river, and Viral's reminded of the winds back home.

Well, what was his home.

"You want me to leave," Viral says. The Doctor doesn't try to deny this.

"You're not a fixed point, but you're just...wrong. Nothing's meant to live that long."

"Are you speaking of me, or yourself, Doctor?"

A smile slides across the Doctor's face.

"Oh, you're clever."

"So I've been told," Viral responds. There's nothing but the wind between them for a moment. The Doctor laughs, just for a moment, before there's the feeling of cool metal at his throat.

Viral acts without thinking, tackling the hoodlum to the concrete before the knife can slit the Doctor's throat. The delinquent scrambles for his knife, and plunges it over and over again into Viral's chest. The beastman can hear the steel skittering across bone, can feel the blade carve through his organs. The young criminal stabs the beastman with such force that multiple wounds seem to be one long cut.

The Doctor fumbles for his sonic screwdriver, and with a simple 'click', the perception filter falls away.

It is Viral's true face that scares the boy off, though it takes him a moment before he notices the gleaming golden eyes and the very sharp teeth. The Doctor helps the beastman to his feet. Too dizzy from the loss of blood, Viral doesn't understand how suddenly, they are back in the TARDIS, and there is a weight on his wrist.

He also cannot understand why he can still feel broken ribs beneath the surface of his skin, or why he is still bleeding. They are safe and away in the TARDIS before Viral looks up at the Doctor. His voice is very quiet as their eyes meet.

"I'm not healing."

"Viral...."

"I'm...I'm not healing," and there's no tone to the voice. Viral stumbles towards the console and barely manages to catch himself as he goes down. His hands slide across several controls, which sends them off who knows where. The TARDIS banks roughly to the right. The Doctor scrambles to maintain control, running to Viral when the course is set a bit smoother. By this point, Viral has draped himself over the nearby chair, eyes closed. The beastman can't bring himself to gather the energy to open his eyes, but he can hear the Doctor.

There are soft words in a language that Viral does not know. Absently, Viral can hear a soft dripping sound, and is aware of a wetness about his wrist. He rolls his head over to look down at what is surely a bleeding wound. Sure enough, blood is soaking into his skin.

And at the end of his arm, not rough, oversized paws, but long, pink fingers and rough palms.


	14. Chapter 14

_Oh my god guys I haven't update this in forever. I'm so sorry-life has gotten in the way (upside-FINALLY done with community college and off to ORLANDO in August), but there's still one more chapter to go after this. I'm loving Matt Smith so much as the Doctor, and so hopefully I'm not putting too much of 11 in 10 here._

_(ALSO HOW AMAZING WAS "THE DOCTOR'S WIFE" IT WAS PERFECT THAT'S WHAT IT WAS)_

Viral awakens later, much later, in what must be a medical bay. There's a warm hum around him, and it feels...nice. He lifts his head, or attempts to, but it feels heavy. There's a hint of the taste of metal in his mouth, but it disappears quickly.

"Good morning," he hears. The beastman sees the blurry form of the Doctor through sleep-bleared eyes. Viral instinctively tries to push himself up from the bed-his arms are weak, but he feels those same overlarge paws, rough and calloused. Words form in his head, but his throat feels too raw.

"What happened?" he rasps, still confused. He remembers a knife in his chest and slender pink forearms and hands, not these monstrous things. There's a scrape of metal across flooring and the Doctor is at the beastman's bedside. He's quiet.

"You were stabbed."

"Well, yes, I'm aware of that, I was there."

"Viral you...," the Doctor starts to get fidgety, like he knows what he wants to say but the words are too obscure and he's trying to simplify it, "...do you recall when you told me about Lord Genome?"

"Of course. He made me immor-"

"You're not immortal."

"I...what?"

"Your DNA, it's been changed so that you heal almost immediately. It's why you haven't aged."

"So why did I nearly bleed out all over the floor?"

"It's...complicated to explain."

"Try."

"It's not permanent, and it's not eternal. There's not a way to change that without...without going through certain actions that Genome never dreamed of."

"So I can die?"

"Eventually, yes."

"Oh."

There's a silence that stretches for a long while, before either speaks again.

"Why did I see...hands, like yours, instead of these things?"

"You were bleeding heavily, and when you fell you hit the filter and shorted it out-you became the one who saw them as something."

Viral rubs his face and huffs. The hum is still there, warm and low. The beastman wonders if it's the TARDIS, trying to reassure him he'll be fine. She's a funny old thing, smells of the earth after rain and is old and new and he can't quite figure her out.

"So what now?"

"Same old adventures, if you like. I can take you back home, if you like, too"

Viral smiles.

"Why? Everyone I know is gone, and you're not going to take me back to...I'd rather just stay. Die fighting, if I have to."

The Doctor chuckles, soft, almost sad.

"Of course."

The time rotors keep on, and every once in a while the wheeze of the breaks echoes down the hall. The reality of mortality settles over Viral, and he almost begins to laugh.

He has a freedom he did not before. Absently, he wonders if he can father a child but no. Why would Genome change that?

But he doesn't feel as though he will have to endure eternity. And it feels so much better than he's felt in years.

The TARDIS settles with a rough thunk, and beyond the doors, a million chances.


	15. Chapter 15

_warning, bit of a spoiler for portal/portal2_

Viral decides that since he has been reintroduced to the concept of mortality that he's going to take advantage of the safety of the TARDIS and sleep while his body repaired itself. It still healed rapidly-much more than the humans he'd known. The Doctor breezes in and out, and Viral wonders what the man accomplishes in the space of the long hours it takes him to be well enough to trudge into the console room, favoring his right leg where the mugger had dug the heel of his boot in mistakenly. But that would be later.

For now, he is sleeping lightly, unable to shake off years of brutal training under the generals of Lord Genome. There's the barest touch of something at his subconscious, and Viral's dream (if he can call the thoughtless blissful drifting a dream) shifts just so and it seems he's awake, but not really.

There's a woman, wild-haired and a bit wide-eyed who is smiling at him, this weird, distant smile, like she's keeping a secret from him.

"I'm not, you know," she says and Viral can see the equations that make up what she's saying, like it's simplified for him. He can't tell how she's dressed and how she looks seems to sway a bit but it's still the same person.

"Not what?"

"Able to speak to him," and she pauses for a beat and her eyes seem lost in sadness for a moment, "and no, no secrets. Not generally. Then again I'm not usually speaking so there you are"

There seems something familiar about her, something old and new and the scent of something ancient and living and the eyes are so so blue and

oh.

_Oh._

She smiles.

"Yes, it's me. Hello, kitty," and she ruffles his hair, matted tangled mess that it is. He wants to be angry but the stress, the build behind it never comes. The woman walk/drifts to his side.

"Do you usually come to the bedsides of the half-dead?"

"No, and not usually to the strays he brings home, at least, not that they can perceive. You're a special thing," and she reaches out to stroke along the length of his gills and he shudders and tries to hide the purr that rumbles in his chest, "but you knew that."

"Special enough to be...well, semi-immortal. Self-healing disguised as immortality," he grunts, knowing she knows because she was there she heard it.

"I do suppose your creator never encountered Artron energy. Spiral and anti-spiral but never artron, which frankly I'm not surprised, what with the Time Lords rounding it up best as they could. Time travel's so tricky, you all never reached that, did you?"

Viral bristles.

"No, the...humans on my planet never did, and neither did the Beastmen."

He doesn't like the idea of 'you all', of being labeled the same as Rossiu and the soldiers who tried to drag him from Underground to that prison, of being labeled the same as the people who looked at him as though he'd outlived his usefullness.

All he can think of is that somewhere out there beyond where they are now, Simon is fourteen and finding the long forgotten machine buried metres and metres down in the earth, and Kamina is still alive. Somewhere in this universe in this time is a him who was still bitter and angry and forgotten, the Viral who followed orders blindly.

The woman makes an unreadable expression, and she looks at him, lips pursed.

"Now now, I meant your planet, not the ones who ruled it."

He feels like he's being admonished, so he looks away from her and mumbles an apology.

"It's alright, kitty. But that artron energy, what with your DNA being a bit mucked with already, it leaked in, slowed things down. You're being slowed down by time," and she gives a half smile, and Viral laughs.

Not much. But he gets the joke, somehow. Artron energy is the energy of time itself, and it's going to slowly kill him, to give him the relief of, one day, a death. It won't change his appearance, and it won't change anything else about him but the fact that he's going to age and that knives to the chest are generally an inadvisable thing from this point.

"Why talk to me?"

The woman gives a shifting smile and Viral watches her hair shimmer between black and a wheat-y gold, changing length back and forth. Her hair color shifts when she moves, blackredblondebrown. Her entire look change in flickers as she thinks and Viral thinks the forms she's taking are meaningful but he can't see, doesn't know why.

"Because he won't. He's not so good with actually saying things, silly old thief of mine. He's bad with that and goodbyes, but we've had so many good byes, he and I and the family he makes for himself. Why, I've been left behind more than once, leapt from here to there and...well, yes, sorry."

"So I'll leave?"

"One day," she says, wistful and sad, "it's something that happens. It's always he and I at the end of it all and...I wish it weren't so," and she looks like a young blonde woman, hair blonde and pinned back, falling to the small of her back. She's dressed in a nautical outfit but that flickers too and here again is that indescribable woman standing before him.

"It won't be bad, though," and she is looking at him but through him, "it won't be."

Viral wakes gradually, feeling actually rested. He touches a hand to his bare, scarred chest, and there are several pink jagged lines that are tender to the touch. A glance to the side shows new clothing, which he throws on and manages to make his way to the console room, to the front door without getting too lost. The Doctor looks up from the console, smiles brightly.

"Well there you are! Feeling better?"

Viral nods, curtly.

"Fantastic!" the Doctor says, the word sticking in his mouth, coming out happy but oddly. He tries "brilliant!" instead and it rings a little brighter through the air so he sticks to that.

And so when the TARDIS doors open to a clean, clinical looking room, Viral's ready. He won't be with the Doctor forever but perhaps that's best. The Doctor needs a friend not as broken as he is, a friend to reign him in when he goes too far.

"Hrm, odd, TARDIS says we've landed in Aperture Labs but...this whole area's abandoned. No one for miles, big incident, Aperture and Black Mesa and a big whole mess...Combine...," and the Doctor sort of trails off, lost in his encyclopedic knowledge of something he's not experienced.

"Doctor," Viral interrupts.

"Yes, sorry, but, why is it so pristine?"

A voice that sounds female echoes from a distant chamber, but they can't tell what it's saying. Something is off, digitized about it.

"Shall we go?"

"It's an awful idea," Viral replies, and there is something off about this place. It's very empty. Even with his heightened senses, there's no one he can hear or smell here but him and the Doctor. Three hearts beating-his one and the two of the Doctor's.

They take a back path where it's a lot grimier and the age of the place is showing. There's a cage full of round little machines, and there's a shifting around and suddenly the Doctor's over the cage, nearly cooing over the things. Viral notices that the optics on some of the things are dark and black, but some are dim and in color. Muffled by all of the machines on top of him, there's a barely visible fellow, optic yellow and dim.

"Gotta go to space!" he's repeating in short, excited bursts. The Doctor smiles broadly.

"Aw, personality cores! " he says, "little machines with AIs inside, perfect little personalities...these must be the flaws, poor things."

"Doctor, I believe they are supposed to stay here. Aside from the locked cage, it looks like they can't move on their own"

The Doctor pulls away from the cage and fixes Viral with a look before looking like a disappointed child.

"I wasn't going to...okay, I was."

The voice sounds again, echoing over the PA system. There's a tinny-automated sound to it, but it's female.

"Have I lied to you?"

Beat.

"In this room? Trust me, leave that thing alone"

The Doctor's eyes widen.

"We should go"

"Now?"

"This is not a safe place to be."

"Thought you thrived on danger?"

"Not here," and the Doctor looks at the cores once more, before starting for the TARDIS. Not running, but walking briskly.

"What is going on?"

"Rogue AI. She's...contained here, and is only a danger to those who wander down in here, and this is so far underground, no one ends up here...," his brow furrows, "not usually and...we have to go."

Another one of the cores speeds past them on an overhead rail, blue optic shining. It's muttering to itself and when it turns to see what it's breezed past, they're out of sight.

"So who is she talking to, then, if no one's here?"

The voice keeps going, rattling off disturbing lines, and then it goes silent, and then comes back and there's a laugh and it comes back, almost seductive, but angry and so very quiet.

"I...they used to test on humans, there's a woman named Chell...listen, Viral, this is something that's fixed. Because this place, years and years from now, relatively, something is going to threaten this area, and..."

"Fixed point in time."

Viral tries to not hear what that voice is saying, because he remembers his commanding officers, cruel things most of them were, browbeating him to obedience when he was already genetically designed to do what they said.

No kindness among the soldiers of Genome's army.

They manage to get past a set of turrets who call out in soft voices "are you still there?", and all it cost them was one of the the Doctor's shoes and a sleeve from Viral's shirt. The doors of the TARDIS shut behind them, the Doctor can't seem to get to the console fast enough.

"It's a fixed point," Viral repeats, "but does she ever get away?"

"Yes...no," the Doctor says, turning knobs and dials, "not for a while. Years in stasis, and she has to go through the whole ordeal again, best as I know it. But it's not Glados, it isn't that AI who is the trouble. It's another that nearly blows the compound to simthereens, but she gets to leave"

And the Time Lord is frustrated and won't look at Viral and he knows it must eat at him, this one woman put through so much, so close, and he could save her. But millions might die because there was no one there to stop an unstable computer program from destroying the place.

Viral strolls up to the makeshift couch and sits down.

"Fixed point or not, she'll be free one day," he says, "everything in its time, I suppose."

The Doctor looks at him strangely. Viral isn't going to tell the Doctor about guilt or shame because the man is ten times his age and the Gallifreyan is possibly the only person who knows the burden of a long life.

So he settles for a statement of truth.

"She has succeeded, yes? And she will succeed, later? She will be fine."

The Doctor still won't look at him, and the TARDIS tumbles through the vortex.

"He's bad with goodbyes," Viral remembers that woman saying, remembers the look in her eyes when she said she couldn't speak to him, "but he means well" was implied.

Viral strips his shirt off, making for the wardrobe to retrieve another. Scars trace their way across his musculature, wide and white and smooth against the rest of his skin. The newer wounds are still a bit raw and pink, and the heat of the turret's seeking laser has carved another scar across his arm, still tender and blistering.

Viral, he wears his scars mostly on his skin, but the Doctor, his he carries in his head, because scars don't stay when your body changes so drastically, like his.

* * *

_So, yeah, there you are! Still a few more chapters, and then we'll be done. I was feeling creative tonight and meant to write some original stuff but ha that didn't happen. Sorry, bit obsessed with Portal 2 at the moment. I think this is the last really big crossover bit, there might be some allusions but no big ones since we're getting towards the end._


	16. Chapter 16

_Oh my god guys I am so so so sorry this has taken so long. I will be wrapping this up fairly soon, I promise. Life got away from me and ...yeah. We're almost at the end, I promise. I'm a bit rusty at writing 10, especially after watching The Wedding of River Song this evening. 11 is all up in my head and perhaps one day I will write him but not today, XD_

_Been and gone to Orlando, which was rather ill-advised for my job situation but you live, you learn._

_As always, I own none of the mentioned properties in this here fanfiction. I'm just playing in the sandbox for a bit._

_Apologies to Neil Gaiman._

* * *

When they step out of the TARDIS this time, Viral thinks they're back in Roman Britain. He's not sure what it is that makes him think British, but it just does. He's not from this planet at any point in its history, so he figures he could be wrong. It feels like man hasn't really touched here.

There's something just a touch off, though, like there was a filter over his vision, shifting everything just a hair right of feeling 'normal'.

In any case, he can't hear anyone near them, or see anyone. A cursory sniff of the air doesn't tell him anything either, aside from the absence of pollutants he'd associate with heavy industry, though years of living in the city had dulled his senses. He can't place the where, or the when. The Doctor doesn't say, at least, not immediately, so they keep walking.

"So, where are we this time?" Viral finally ventures. The Doctor half-smiles.

"Nowhere special, at least, at the moment."

There's a graveyard at the crest of a hill, and beyond it they can see a small town. It's not much, and not terribly developed, but it's there. There are electric lights in the homes but the graveyard is fenced and overgrown.

"This is England."

"Yes."

"You seem to be quite partial to it," Viral observes, "your voice and general demanor would prove as much."

The Doctor smiles.

"Can't help it. Love this planet," he grins, "but I'm not an Englishman, truly. S'a nice compliment though."

"But why here, now?"

"A stroll. Hey, it's not all running and hiding and tripping up monstrous tycoons"

Viral shakes his head, hiding a smirk. It's cold, so he shoves his hands in his pockets. The graveyard's drawing closer now, and the beastman swears he can see forms shifting and moving beyond the fence. Soon they are strolling alongside the metal barrier, and the Doctor is talking about the history of the area, when Viral's attention is drawn elsewhere. He inhales sharply.

"And a cyberman, a cyberman! Right over-Viral, are you alright?"

It smells very strongly wolfish; and that's really the best he can ever describe it to someone who hadn't spent their life around beastmen; but then strangely, fully human. He arches an eyebrow in question.

"There aren't beastmen on earth, are there?"

"No. Well, I mean, legends of were-creatures, but no...no one like you, my fuzzy friend. Why?"

Viral feels perhaps that presence is better left alone, especially when he sees the mischievous glint in the Doctor's eyes.

"Thought I caught wind of one. Must have been mistaken."

The Doctor looks disappointed, and Viral allows himself a chuckle. How friendly he's gotten. How genial. He's not so much the bitter survivor as he was. And if he is to depart soon, well, all the better to be one of the (evidently) few who kept the Time Lord's nose out of things that did not concern him.

No, no even the milk-sweet smell of a child would allow him to let the Time Lord hop the fence to inspect the graveyard. Or the ancient rumble of something far below the earth. This was not their story.

Viral's strides are longer than the Doctor's, and so he ends up ahead. He turns a corner before the Doctor does, and tries to not think about how his ribs ache beneath his skin. He's not sure what from; they had just escaped from molten plastic men, and not too long before that they'd encountered what the Doctor had called a yeti. They nearly had died as the Doctor chattered appreciatively at how he'd not run into them in ages. He'd taken spills and tumbles but he didn't think it was anything bad enough to crack a rib.

He has to pause for a minute as pain coils up his spine. One hand grabs roughly for the fence.

This keeps happening. He's not sure what it is-old wounds from long-since-passed battles, or just the creaks and groans of a body adjusting to healing normally. Slowly.

Viral looks back for the Doctor and swears he can see a woman on horseback in the distance. He's not sure why he thinks female when he sees the figure, because she's too far away for him to see detail, but something is distinctively female.

He looks away for a moment but the figure is gone. Viral is still for a moment, trying to clear his mind.

The Doctor finally rounds the corner, but something stops him short of where Viral is standing.

"Hello!"

The voice is small and young, and the child it is emanating from is very much alive, and wrapped up in a grey sheet, a bit like a toga. The Doctor is quick to drop to his knees, all smiles and bright eyes.

"Hello there! Who might you be?"

"My name's Bod. Nobody Owens," and Viral is confused. That's not...really a name, is it?

"Oh,that's a brilliant name, Bod. I'm the Doctor."

The child, who cannot be more than perhaps five or six, gives the Doctor a 'look', and then fixes his eyes on Viral. The beastman shifts awkwardly-he'd never been much around children.

"Who is that?" 'Bod' asks, cautiously. Like he can see beneath the filter to how Viral really looks beneath.

"Oh him? My friend Viral. He looks a bit vicious, but he's harmless, promise."

The sun is wavering on the horizon, and the air is growing chill. The boy is sweet, and very well mannered for a child of whatever age he is.

"What are you doing in a graveyard, though? Seems a bit of an odd place to play," the Doctor muses, rubbing his chin. Viral can nearly hear the gears turning in the Doctor's head. No, there's not a mystery to solve, they need to go. It feels...wrong to interfere, to stay.

"Oh," the boy smiles brightly, "I live here!"

The beastman is not sure he's ever seen the Doctor ever looked more puzzled. He wants to say something, but the sheer strangeness of it is rendering the Time Lord speechless. Viral is about to bid the child goodbye when he feels it.

A velvet, soundless emptiness. There is nothing where there should be something, and it is very cold. Fear creeps in the corners of Viral's mind, much as he tries to shut it out.

"Are you happy?" Viral asks the boy where the Doctor can't.

"Of course! I've got mum and dad and everyone! It's lovely here."

"I suppose that's all that matters," and the beastman allows a small smile, and the child is still looking at him strange.

"What?"

"You look...different, is all."

"Is that bad?"

The child gives it a moment's thought.

"No, not really."

Something calls in the distance for him, evidently, because Bod excuses himself and runs from the fence, a small solid blur until he crests the hill and is gone.

"A child living in a graveyard," the Doctor finally manages.

"Yes, he seems to be."

"In a graveyard?"

"Ah, yes, that is where we're at.

"Bu-"

"Doctor," Viral interrupts, quietly, "he seems to be fine. I don't think this is our place to interfere."

The nothingness draws closer to them, and now the Doctor can feel the cold prickling at the back of his neck.

"Ah. I...see"

"Doctor, we should _**go**_," and the beastman pulls the Time Lord away from the fence, "there is something that doesn't want us here."

The Doctor follows Viral's footsteps. The Beastman knows the Time Lord keeps looking for the child.

"You need to leave it be," Viral snaps, "the child is fine."

His heart thuds heavy in his chest. The fear feels a bit foreign, but if it's some being telling him to get off, he wasn't going to ignore that. It is a few moments later that Viral realizes the man who is supposed to be following him is stuck a few steps back.

"Please, Doctor," Viral calls, and he hates 'please'. He dislikes talking in general, and finds himself longing for the days where he could still roam the mountains, and go weeks without speaking. He hates manners and grammar and much that has to do with mankind but he still finds himself following it because it was how he learned years ago.

"Something driving us away? There has to be a reason for that."

"Sometimes if something tells you to stay away, you just listen," and he's nearly ashamed of the begging in his voice. The Doctor's expression softens, and he hurries along. Viral turns and continues back towards the TARDIS. In his periphery, he can see a tall, pale man, and feel the silent nothingness. The beastman turns and catches the man's eye for second, only a second, but the man curtly nods and then is gone.

It's quiet in the TARDIS for a while. Viral is never in the habit of speaking first, so it's the Doctor who breaks the silence.

"When did you feel it?"

"The man? When I told you that we should leave. A child alone in a graveyard is odd, but he seemed to be fine. So you need to let it be."

Viral had learned ages ago that most things did not require his involvement, nor should he involve himself, barring certain circumstances.

A well fed well mannered child claiming to live in a graveyard was not something he had to investigate. Doubly so when a guardian who could inspire fear into Viral was on the scene.

The Doctor fixes the beastman with a look that he can't quite read.

"I'm sorry, Viral, I just..."

"It's fine."

Knobs are turned, levers are pulled, and off they go through the vortex.

"Have you been a father?" Viral asks, after a moment. The Doctor looks up at him from the controls for a moment, then continues to move about.

"Well, yes."

"Ah," Viral says, his mind somewhat distant.

The Doctor pauses in his orchestrations across the control panels.

"You alright?"

Somewhere in his abdomen, something hurts. His stomach seems to curl on itself. He grits his teeth, and attempts for the pain not to show.

"I'm fine."

The Doctor moves from the console to the beastman.

"You're not," he answers back, and the Timelord looks him up and down. Viral steps away.

"They're minor injuries. Not life threatening," he is quiet. Inside, his spine aches and the ache crawls along his ribs. The Doctor takes little heed of the beastman's personal space, pressing two fingers gingerly into Viral's ribs. It takes all his resolve not to swat the man away with one large hand and send him crashing into the console.

He still flinches, but instead of being violent, he yowls, deep and feral. He pulls away sharply and the ache won't go away.

"Your ribs are broken," the Doctor says, "badly."

The Doctor won't ask why he hasn't said anything. Viral just doesn't, even now, even as long as they've been traveling together.

"When?"

Viral has to shuffle through his memory. He'd taken a bad tumble off a hillside at one point.

"The yetis, I think."

"You're not going to heal as fast as you did. You should remember that."

Viral grunts non-commitally.

"When you feel ready, visit the hospital wing. I can help you get fixed up there."

Viral heads out of the console room and to the left, wandering and cursing himself for being so foolish. He'd spent so long not really being affected by scrapes and falls that this was new for him. He had to relearn how to fight and live, and it was beyond irritating. Beyond that he felt less in control of himself. He longed for the days of solitude he used to have.

He ends up in the hospital wing, without meaning to. The TARDIS seems to reassure him with a self-satisfied hum that she knows where he needs to be. Soon, he is in phenomenally less pain, though he refuses the pain medicine the Doctor tries to give him.

Instead, he goes off to what serves as his room and tries to rest. It's a simple enough space, but enough for him. There's a ledge up high for him to lay down on as well as a bed, but he chooses the ledge, even though he ends up hanging half over it to not stress his ribs.

Viral falls asleep, and as he sleeps, he dreams of the woman he saw by the Graveyard. He is standing in a shiftless, familiar land. There's clumps of wooded areas here and there and it smells of earth and rain and hard work.

"You are far from home, young man," her voice is smooth and comforting. She walks beside the horse she'd been riding. The horse is calm in Viral's presence, and it's a beautiful silver-grey.

"I'm not young," he manages. She's very pretty, for a human, and he finds himself growing a bit bashful.

"Ah, but you are, compared to me," she chuckles, "as is that man you travel with. But you are far from home."

"Yes."

The woman seems like she's never been sad. Just...peaceful calm. Not nothingness. There's a warmth to her presence.

"Don't worry," she says, when he looks away from her suddenly as he realizes who she is, "I'm not here for you yet. There are things still waiting for you."

Viral smiles. He knows this is all in his head, but it's still comforting to hear.

"Thank you."

They walk in silence, the both of them, through the misty familiar land until they reach a rocky beach and the sea. Viral thinks he sees Simon at one point, ages older than he'd last seen him. His face was carved with wrinkles, but he somehow was still standing strong and upright. But the vision passes and his attention is elsewhere.

Because there is a familiar face to Viral there on that beach, perched on a rather large rock.

His breath doesn't quite catch in his throat, but it nearly does. It's the woman he'd met who looked like the wife he'd never had. The one who called herself Tsuuma, but was more suited to Cille. Someone calls for her, and she clambers down, smiling. Viral steps back to hide himself, out of habit, which sends a few rocks skittering behind him.

He wakes before those eyes focus on him. His heart is thudding, half from his dream and half from having rolled over onto his sore side. With a quite ungraceful leap, he hit the floor of the room and walked out the door.

He remembered the last time he'd seen Simon. It had been after the wedding, perhaps a decade or so. He'd lost track after about ten years. The boy was now a man, much older than the hero who saved the universe. His face was carved with wrinkles, but he had this wisdom about him. He'd spent years in the desert, a man with no name.

"Must be humbling," Viral had remarked, handing the man a cup of warm brandy. After gulping a bit down, Simon chuckled.

"Extremely."

They shared a sparse meal, and didn't talk much. The sun had already started setting when Simon brought up the battle against the anti-spiral.

"I spent my whole life trying to be like Kamina," Simon had sighed. It was lost on neither of them that Simon now was probably twice the age that the brash man had lived to, "but that would have just led me to ruin."

"He had ambition, but no sense," Viral remarked, stoking the fire. Simon laughed.

"Yeah," and then, after a moment, "I would have been taller than him."

"What?" Viral dusted his hands against his pants. Simon waved a hand dimissively.

"It's nothing...it's...well, that dream that the anti-spirals threw us in. Remembering him is what woke me out of it. At the end I saw him and I was taller."

He muttered a bit at the end, but Viral still heard it, and chuckled softly.

"It does happen."

"Yeah," Simon replied, smiling a bit, "guess so."

They were silent for a moment.

"What did you see?"

"What?"

"When the Anti-Spiral tried to stop us, what did you see?"

Viral was silent, and Simon blanched, realizing what he'd said as soon as he'd said it.

"Oh, geez, I'm sorry, I...look, you don't have to tell m-"

"I had a family. A wife. A child," he had answered, his voice hushed. He'd told no one before that, and it still stung. Simon hadn't responded for a long time, and then,

"I'm sorry."

"For what? You didn't create me, didn't cast an illusion in my mind. It was a nice dream...but that's all it was. It wasn't real."

Viral never put stock in dreams. They were misleading.

And all he had dreamed about lately was that beautiful woman with the honey-colored hair. Even if they returned to see her (and with how the Doctor never quite could pilot the TARDIS, he was fairly certain he'd never see her again), she didn't know what he really looked like.

He felt entirely juvenile, but he knew she'd be afraid of him if she knew how he truly looked. That was the last thing he ever wanted.

It hadn't even crossed his mind that he'd fall in love. He'd seen Simon tear through universes to save the woman he loved, and he'd seen so many people die to defend those they cared about.

It must be such a wonderful thing, he mused, to have someone who cares for you.

The TARDIS lurched back and forth several times, and the wheezing of the brakes tells him they've arrived. Where, he is not certain.


	17. Chapter 17

_OH MY GOD YOU GUYS I AM SO SO SORRY. Life got way the fuck away from me. I will finish this. I swear. I've been swept off by new things (namely comics related things and AVENGERS AVENGERS AVENGERS) but I still am going to finish this. Promise. I know I keep apologizing but it'll be worth it, I promise. The crossover bits will be more of general mentions, because we're getting to the end here._

_Apologies to all the authors whose works I am tampering with._

_I think we have only like two more chapters. I don't know exactly-I had everything planned out and then I lost the file, so I'm going off what I can remember. _

* * *

They visit many places after. Golden halls said to belong to gods filled with trouble and secrets, dark forests full of mysterious lumbering near human creatures who broadcast their thoughts to the winds, broken lands razed by a revolution that will spawn a grotesque pageant that will destroy lives for nearly a century, to mundane cities and towns across decades and worlds.

Viral has stood in a crowd, parted from the Doctor, and watched an innocent man lose his head while his daughters watched in horror, saw that youngest daughter cast away her femininity and run. He has watched the dragon's children lazily flap through the air (one even bites at his fingers when he tries to push it away-they are quite fond of him), heard the sound of their mother's laughter. Her eyes are bright and her hair fair and they call her Khaleesi and she regards Viral with a strange smile. She takes his rough, over-sized paws in her hands (after a rather rough tumble has broken the perception filter) and teaches him basic words in Dothraki and is not frightened of him.

Not even when he tears the throat from a soldier who tries to send a spear through the Doctor's hearts when the man finally finds him once more, and hits the door of the TARDIS.

For what do dragons have to fear?

They stop and go, and stop and go.

They come across children and adults who are not human but not quite beyond it; children who can shift shapes or fly or manipulate elements or minds. Blue and red and grey skin and it is one of the few times that Viral disengages his perception filter and hears cries of, "oh, cool!" instead of shrieks of horror.

They stop and go.

Viral finds himself actually sleeping, and dreams waver at the edge of his recollection. Beastmen were never meant to last as he did. Never meant to dream. They were an army, bred for speed and efficiency. They slept rarely, and dreams were unheard of.

Dreams were human. Goals, to be sure of it, were human as well.

They spent a lot of time on earth, or places like it. Viral becomes acquainted with a woman who can bend the elements to her will, but cannot bring herself to allow anyone near her emotionally. She raises up an island and a people who follow her instruction well. The children of her island can fight, regardless of gender.

They save a lot of people.

It's not enough, though. He can tell. The Doctor will never be done saving people. The Doctor is still trying to save him, he realizes. Old, lying eyes and fake smiles and the Doctor cannot let himself let one more person get hurt because of him.

But he is not to be saved. Viral has seen death, stared it in the face and laughed. That was when he had been young. Now he is waiting for Death to take his hand, smile its distant, warm smile, and to be nothing. It is better than the endless travel and the knowledge that he is destined to fade to nothingness, alone.

It is not a warrior's end, he feels, to pine such for something he cannot have, and so he shuts the feeling out. He roams the endless shifting halls of the TARDIS, restless and irritated.

They come across brothers who call themselves hunters. These brothers nearly pump Viral full of a spray of salt and lead before another man, weary-eyed and kind, waves his hand in protest.

"Cas," the shorter brother almost growls, "what are you-"

"He's not a demon. Or a...a...what did you call it?"

"Ailuranthrope," the taller one replies, looking after Viral worryingly.

"I don't know what that is," Cas says, and really looks at Viral, past the scars and hurt and sees the solider, sees the child he used to be, "but he is not going to hurt anyone."

"I can vouch for that," the Doctor quips, and the sandy-haired brother glares at him.

"No offense, Doc Brown, but your word isn't really worth shit after you left us hanging in Montana."

The Doctor winces, and were Viral more verbose, he'd have mouthed, "Doc Brown?" and missed the reference completely.

"That, ah, was a slight miscalculation on my part."

"No shit."

Cas smiles, soft and incredibly sad and whatever he is (Angel, he's told later, by the shorter brother, Dean; the one who tries not to look at Cas) and Viral can feel the inherent oldness of the creature.

It's something they have in common.

The threat they take down (with minimal help from the Doctor, as Dean is glad to point out. Sam mentions, repeatedly, that had Viral not found them and ripped the throat out of the actual Ailuranthrope that was killing people and about to turn Sam's throat into shredded beef) is minimal. It's a welcome distraction, he hears Sam mutter, though from what Viral cannot say.

He knows the water they come across sometimes smells wrong.

Cas comes and goes, and a woman is sometimes there with him. She grins all feral and wicked at Viral, and spits out jabs with vicious precision and Viral is almost amused at her humor. Cas looks upon her, smiling, even laughing, soft and a little broken.

There is clearly something between the two, these creatures who are so set apart from what people define them as. It makes Viral a bit heartsick.

Eventually, Viral and the Doctor leave there, too. They are always leaving. Always running.

At first, Viral does not care. He is apathetic.

Then he starts becoming restless, angry. He cannot run. He has always run, truly, from himself. He ran willingly into battle with the humans because he was told it was proper. He ran to their aid because it was 'the right thing to do'. He ran with them to the stars and back because they needed help.

He had risen in stature and power back home because he followed their path, forged in his own way.

And so when once again, somehow, they return to Britain, Viral looks to the sea. He's getting good at placing years, though he cannot say with as much surety as the Doctor where they are. It is vast and empty where they land, and at the crest of a hill, a single Centurion stands guard.

"When are we?"

"Roman Briton, circa..." the Doctor gets lost in his thoughts for a moment, then blinks, as if something has happened. The man at the crest of the hill and whatever he is guarding are gone.

Then again, they were never there to begin with.

"Oh," the Doctor says softly, "we left her here, didn't we?"

Viral doesn't answer.

"We did," he says, "though it's been... twelve years, blimey."

The beastman is sure the Doctor's calculations are arbitrary, and that they aren't even near the settlement they left her at, if she was even still there. He claps the perception filter across his wrist just in case.

They walk for a while before they find a settlement. Their attire is, of course, not well suited and gets some sidelong stares, but there's no whisper of trouble or danger here, for now. It's Roman Briton at peace.

Viral doesn't recall asking to look for her, or recommending that they do. He finds himself foolishly trying to catch a glimpse of her, trying to imagine her young face aged a decade more.

Not that it matters, he chides himself. Surely she has grown and taken up a husband and had many children. It is not like he is gifted with prophecy, and that his dreams fortel anything.

He has seen her draped in the robes of a healer, swearing chastity and making good. But he does not believe that this is truth that he dreams. She does not have to wait for him. He had long ago given up the hope of family, or of love as Simon or his friends had known.

They see no sign of her. They did not expect to.

The forests are full of danger, still, even as Rome's troops have swept through them. Viral looses the filter from his wrist, features flickering back into view. The Doctor stays close, fully aware that for all his knowledge and bravado, he was still no match for a set of strong jaws, unless he was particularly lucky.

Things always lurk in the dark. Viral hears the branches snapping before the Doctor realizes what is happening. The beastman rounds on the creature as it lunges towards the skinny streak of a man.

"Get down!" Viral barks, helping the man along by shoving him to the ground. The sun is nearly set, and the shadows are long.

The beastman levels a mighty kick at the attacker's chest, and a high, keening sound bleeds into the air. Viral is all instinct, long body pinning the creature to the ground. One hand pins both arms above the creature's head, another rests at its throat. It is human shaped, but not human, and it mutters in languages old as the earth. Its face is blue as the depths of the sea.

Viral bares his teeth, and the creature's eyes are wide. It tries to curse, tries to fight back but Viral's free hand closes around its neck.

"Try it, I dare you. Try to best me."

The kelpie's eyes twinkle, as if it is taking a challenge. It moves to speak again but Viral squeezes its neck tighter.

About the same time that the Doctor cries, "Viral, stop it!", something rustles against a nearby tree. The distraction is almost enough for the kelpie to abscond, but Viral hunted to survive for ten years, and so he cranes his neck down and bites clean through the kelpie's neck. The Doctor looks on, almost horrified.

But he knows what Kelpies are, what they do. It does not mean he is still not angry at Viral.

Viral's head snaps up, maw dripping with blood, and now the cause of the sound is clear. The hair is longer and wilder, and the face a bit more weathered and aged, but she is bound up in the clothing from his dream.

"He's a little far south for a kelpie," she says, a trace of Latin still present in her voice. Viral feels like his jaw should drop, that he should be ashamed to be before her like this, mouth dripping with the blood of a creature he will learn is called Fae.

Perhaps she does not recognize him, he thinks, he hopes.

But her mouth quirks up in a smile and recognition alights in her eyes.

"My rescuers," she says, leaning heavily on her walking stick, "you have returned".


	18. Chapter 18

_OH MY GOD GUYS I AM SO SORRY. I did not forget you! Or this story. Things have been absolutely mad and I do want get this story finished. I've been writing for four years now jesus._

_Disclaimer: well jeez I wish I owned one of these two franchises, but alas I do not._

_And if anyone was curious, the series' I was referencing in that first bit of Chapter 17 were as follows: Thor, The Chaos Walking Trilogy, Hunger Games, and then Games of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire, X-Men, and Avatar: The Last Airbender (during Kyoshi's time as Avatar), then finally, obviously, Supernatural._

* * *

She stands there, thoroughly unmoved by the site before her. A dead kelpie, an alien man-beast awash in blood, and a very poorly dressed skinny streak of nothing who is wide-eyed and babbling.

After a moment, with Viral just staring and the Doctor still spouting nonsense, she offers her hand to help the Time Lord up. Viral still just looks at her, like he's seen a ghost. He spits the kelpie blood that's pooled in his mouth on the ground, and makes a half-hearted attempt to wipe his face. He will now look anywhere but her face.

"Cille-or Tsuuma, or.." the tall man says, and she shushes him.

"Cille is fine. I've gone by it twelve years now."

The Doctor starts to talk, but his voice dies off when Cille walks past him to stand in front of Viral with a curious look on her face. She's still nearly a foot shorter than the beastman.

"You don't look like any of the fae I've encountered. Too tall, for one."

Viral spares a look over his shoulder, but does not speak.

"Clearly, not human," she continues, reaching out to almost touch the back of his right arm. He knows nothing of her, he tells himself. The dream world they lived in was nothing like his world, nothing like this one.

This woman was a stranger who shared her face. This woman sought comfort in his arms. His mind raged against itself.

"I mean, I should have figured as much when you swept me away in that box. But what are you?"

"Beastman," he says, a rumble in his voice. He doesn't know what a fae is, but the way she talks about them, all bitterness and anger, she'd imagine they were cruel things.

She gives this a moment's thought, and steps back from him.

"Well, clearly," and she grins wide and almost wicked, "I would never peg you for a little old faery. More like a changeling's child."

Viral looks to the Doctor, who should honestly have a compendium of earth mythology in his head. The man jumps to Cille's side and tries to engage her in conversation, but she keeps looking at Viral and he finally, finally turns around.

"Hello again, Cille."

"Hello, Viral."

The voices are the same, but the person is not.

"Yes well okay hi Doctor here maybe we should move out of this particular area of the woods."

"Oh, I rather think we're okay. Kelpies don't move in packs, and we're far afield of their usual stomping grounds."

"Well I meant that I heard someone else coming and Viral is sort of, well, covered in blood."

She laughs.

"There's a stream this way, where I've set up camp. Come along."

The air is cold and bracing, still, but the woods are quiet. The sun is still shining through the trees, and Viral spends the hike studying their surroundings. It had been practice during his time in the military, but now it was habit. He had spent so long by himself that letting his guard down wasn't an option. Even now, flustered as he was that he couldn't think of anything but an emotional gambit a heartless enemy had used against him, he kept scouting around.

The tang of the kelpie's blood was still fresh on his tongue. It was saline and copper and earth. His jaw ached from the force he'd used and he was half certain bits of bone were stuck between his molars.

And he felt so alive for it. The hunt and the chase were the blood in his veins.

He had seen the Doctor's face. He knew the look. He'd seen it far too many times before 'back home'.

People always forgot that he was an animal, deep down. He was bred for battle and survived by the skin of his teeth, only to be rendered obsolete. He did what he had to to survive.

And that wasn't always pretty, and it wasn't always nice. Not that the Doctor could talk, since there was something darker behind his eyes that frightened even Viral.

It was the pity.

He hated being the object of someone's pity.

They reach Cille's camp, and Viral scrubs the dried blood from his hands and his face, and rinses his mouth. He cleans the crusted earth and blood from beneath his claws, and sits on the bank in silence.

"It's wonderful to see you again," the Doctor says in the midst of starting a small fire. Cille's camp is very small; she looks to be the only occupant. She has a makeshift tent set up between two young trees, and little else.

"I could say the same of you. Twelve years, for me. I expect not the same for you."

"Ah, no," the Doctor blushes, "considerably less. Our transport sort of...moves through time and space."

She doesn't seem flustered by this.

"What have you been up to?" the Time Lord asks, all cheeky grin and wild hair.

"I found a clan who needed help, and they took me in. Skillful with a knife, as it turns out. They...well, you met the kelpie. Fae are wicked things and get to be a problem further north. I was tracking the one your friend killed for weeks, now."

"They sent out a woman?" the Doctor says. He arches a single eyebrow, and almost immediately regrets his question.

"Considering I've put down of those in the past five years than most of the men? Yes."

Viral chuckles quietly.

"Admittedly, the Hunter life was...stressful, to begin with. But after I'd gone from Rome back to Briton in the space of a few hours, after...," she pauses for a moment to look at Viral, "after the dreams I used to have, the presence of the fae wasn't so odd."

"You two returning is, though."

The motormouth Time Lord is silent for once.

"I, well...just wanted to drop in. Spacial movement so quickly for someone like you, can be very upsetting."

"I see."

The Doctor and Cille talk a little more and eventually they all partake in some roasted fish from the river (courtesy of Viral's quick reflexes). The stars are out and shining when Cille and Viral finally get to speak to each other in peace. The Time Lord is marveling at the stars again.

The maps he must have in his head, Viral wonders. Stars and planets in those solar systems and the lives and histories of people upon them.

Viral enjoys the cold air and the shining full moon. It still makes him no more willing to talk. Cille sits near him, silent for a long while.

"Twelve years has changed you," he says. He sees a dim star, off to the right, tries to recall its name.

"Time will do that," she replies. He chances a look over; she's got her legs stretched out and she's leaning back on her palms. Her feet are bound up in boots and her legs swathed in fabric.

"When we left, you were shy," he says, "timid, even."

He's trying to be blunt, trying to be standoffish. He does not want to stay.

She laughs. It's short and bitter and harsh.

"I was. You learn fast when your life is in danger. But the hunt, the chase...it's kind of enjoyable, sometimes."

He can't help but look at her with an odd sense of fascination.

"There are things that you can feel born to do, I suppose," she continues, "and I was never meant to be a house-slave. The fae are usually respectful but they are wicked and dangerous things and I will keep my people safe."

And he smiles.

"You've gotten strong then."

"Yes," she replies, "I have."

He wants the conversation to stall there, but she just looks at him with his mouth full of teeth and misshapen limbs and grabs a hold of his arm.

"So how do you know me, then?"

He pulls away, shakes his head.

"I don't...I can't...Cille," but she won't let go. She's not fighting back tears-she's angry.

"I have been trying to find out why I know your face for a long time. You are not going to sit here and lie to me because you're not comfortable with it. I have dealt with liars and thieves and deceivers. I am a woman, but I am not weak. My 'constitution' can handle it. So tell me," and she's too close and her breath is warm on his cheek but the words are cold.

"Who are you?"

And he tells her. How he came from a world a long while away where there were humans and beastmen. How they fought. How people died. Why the men were trapped below ground. About Simon, and Yoko, and Kamina. About how enemies became friends. How he helped save the world and was left alone.

And he tells her that Beastmen don't reproduce like humans and most animals. That they needed help. That the Anti-Spirals best weapon was to give you everything you ever wanted.

"But that doesn't tell me who I am to you," she interrupts, "I have lived a whole life with dreams that are too real, things that guide me too well. You are the only moment of clarity at all. Tell me who I am."

"They give you what you want the most," he says, teeth on edge, "and I had wanted a family. A wife," he looks at her, "and a child, and to cease being a soldier. All impossible, of course."

She stares at him for a long moment, as if she isn't sure what to say.

"Is that why you kissed me?"

"No I ...I had not meant to do that."

A hand cracks him across the cheek, and he bites into his tongue to not snarl out of habit and instinct.

"You do not even know me."

"I don't." he agrees, "and that is why I left."

"How do I even remember this?"

"I do not know how the anti-spirals work. I could not tell you."

She sets back down to the hard-packed dirt with a huff.

"Well," she says, "well."

Then after a while, "what was she like?"

Viral huffs, then replies.

"Much like you. Shy, but fierce. Protective. A good fighter. A mother. But she wasn't real. You are. You have your own life and I...I have no part in it. I am so sorry."

"So what will you do? Travel with the Doctor until you decide somewhere is good enough, plop down, call it home?"

"I do not know."

Silence claims them again. The moon shines off the water, and neither of them move for a while. Viral is aware, after a fashion, that Cille is staring at him.

"What?"

"Your neck," and she reaches out to run her fingers along the slits of his gills. He tries to protest the touch but his breath hitches in his chest and rumbles out as a purr, which surprises him and Cille alike. She stares at his chest, then his face, and stops her hand for a moment.

"What was that?" she asks, a laugh in her voice. He mutters out an explanation for the purr and she looks so content to have found this out that she keeps going, and he leans into her touch.

"Oh, that is precious," she says as he sort of half-leans over her. He tries to look upset but it isn't working. He finally resorts to taking hold of her wrists and pushing them away.

"D-don't tell," and it takes him a moment to get his voice back in order, "do not tell the Doctor. I would never hear the end of it."

And she looks at him and there is no pity, only curiosity and eagerness and a thrill for a hunt and she smiles.

"Alright."

"Thank you."

Night goes and day comes and for once it is rather uneventful in the Doctor's life. Cille and Viral talk a time or two in the night, and come morning they are trying to find the TARDIS again. The scent of it is easy to track, but Viral still insists on eating a proper meal before they return to the TARDIS. Cille agrees and brings back several small creatures and they have a lovely meal.

The Doctor makes some sort of excuse to leave the two alone, though Viral is certain to keep him within sight.

"I wish I could have helped you more," the beastman tells Cille. She bites back a laugh.

"I will be fine. Will you, though?"

She cocks her head and stares right through him. She is new and strange and lovely and he wants to know her, truly know her.

"Yes. I have him, and there are worlds to see."

"Quite right."

The walk back to the TARDIS is slow and quiet. She's still standing there, blue as blue and the cleanest, most comforting scent he's ever smelled. The closer they get, the more he wants Cille to grab his arm, to touch his shoulder, to say anything.

And they are standing at the doors now. Cille runs her hands over one of the wooden panels.

"It's...it's alive," she says, quiet as a whisper, "well isn't that something?"

"Yeah," the Doctor grins and strokes the side of the box lovingly, "she certainly is."

"You're going now, I expect."

It takes Viral a moment before he realizes that it's directed at him.

"Ah, yes."

"A pity, then. You seem to be a natural at handling the fae. Could have used you," she says, and she reaches up to press a kiss to his cheek and he can only stare.

The world before him is wild and wonderful. The land stretches out and miles away on either side there is beautiful ocean.

And there is a woman who wants to be his friend and a land that he can learn and navigate and be nothing more than a story in the end.

He looks out at the expanse in front of him, and back into the TARDIS. The doors barely shut behind him and the motors have only begun to turn when he make his decision.

"Doctor," he says, "you are the stupidest man I have ever known. One day your idiocy is going to get you killed."

But Viral grins, wide and feral and truly truly alive and he pushes past the doors and lands face first on the ground. He pops up quick, and he can still see Cille halfway down the hill, marveling at how the box is fading from view.

Viral powers down the hill, stumbling and falling and rolling and he catches her by the waist.

"You are here. You are real, you are brilliant," he says, out of breath and more verbose than he's been in years, "and I want to know who you are, now."

And he tries to be mindful of his teeth and kisses her and doesn't care if it's all a dream.

He pulls back and she's somewhat in shock.

"I'm sorry," he mutters, letting her go. But she smirks just as wickedly as he can and reaches up and messes with his gills and it feels like home.

* * *

_THERE WE ARE. FOUR YEARS. IT'S DONE. Thank you all for your reviews, your kindness, and your patience. I didn't want this to be one of those fics that people enjoyed but never actually was finished. I like to think Viral and his badass lady-love go kicking fae ass everywhere and adopt a little changeling kid who is the most precious thing._


End file.
